home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu.tar
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
icon
/
newsgrp
/
group99a.txt
/
000061_icon-group-sender _Wed Mar 24 08:23:48 1999.msg
< prev
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
2000-09-20
|
3KB
Return-Path: <icon-group-sender>
Received: (from root@localhost)
by baskerville.CS.Arizona.EDU (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id IAA02816
for icon-group-addresses; Wed, 24 Mar 1999 08:23:42 -0700 (MST)
Message-Id: <199903241523.IAA02816@baskerville.CS.Arizona.EDU>
X-Authentication-Warning: helios.dmu.ac.uk: hgs owned process doing -bs
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 09:34:10 +0000 (GMT)
From: Hugh Sasse <hgs@dmu.ac.uk>
To: "Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz>
cc: icon-group@optima.CS.Arizona.EDU
Subject: Re: opendir/readdir in Icon?
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@optima.CS.Arizona.EDU
Status: RO
On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> Hugh Sasse wrote:
> > I think every machine I have used since about 1978 which had a disk
> > supported heirarchical directory structures.
>
> Then you haven't used VM/CMS or RT-11 or the old Mac filesystem.
> (The old Mac file system had nested *folders* but no actual
> directories, file names had to be unique on a disc.)
No, I never used a Mac, and it explains why I found RT-11
baffling when I encountered it :-) And I vaguely remember RSX-11M
being a bit odd in this department too, but am not sure. But we
digress (a little)...
>
> > However, I cannot find
> > anything in the Icon book or the online docs about how to test a
> > "file" to
> > see if it is a file or a directory, or how to list a directory without
> > making a call to some program outside Icon.
>
> Note that there are no such functions in standard C either.
>
OK, though Unix provides stat, and Perl, Tcl, Python do also in a
fairly cross platform way, and standard C doesn't provide anything
like Icon's string handling so I would not have chosen that as a
baseline :-)
> > Is there really no equivalent to opendir and readdir in Icon?
> "Portable" Icon, right.
I want to keep things portable as far as possible.
> > Or where should I be looking?
> Unicon.
Discussions I have had confirm that this is looking a good way to
go. However, I am surprised at the number of answers on this list
that say "Use Unicon" rather than "It is available in Unicon but in
Icon 9.4 we plan to have ...". So I have to ask: what is the
future of Icon, as opposed to its descendents Idol, Jcon, Unicon?
The language has some really cunning features, (readable string
scanning, result or failure, generators...) so it would be a shame
if development just stopped. Or is it just that the Icon Project
are trying to avoid "feeping creaturism", as Larry Wall called it?
Thank you,
Hugh
hgs@dmu.ac.uk