Transput RFC - early version based on POSIX

[chris hermansen]

Good afternoon everyone,

After monkeying around far too long trying to pull out bits of van
Vliet's transput so I could implement it piece by piece, I have given up on
that approach (way too many dependencies between things in there) and am
gritting my teeth and starting back at the beginning.

To facilitate getting as much as possible working, I'd like to put van
Vliet's code and ideas on top of Algol 68 POSIX for now, forgetting about
reading and writing binary for the first go-around.

Does that make sense?

Assuming it's not too crazy an idea, the first bump on the road I've
encountered is dealing with system file status.  As far as I can tell, the
only pathway in Algol 68 POSIX for this type of thing is to call fopen() or
fcreate() with various flags as documented here:

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/ga68/POSIX-files.html

and then, based on what works and what doesn't, I can resolve many of van
Vliet's "possibles":
- get_possible(f) { true if fopen(filename, bits file o rdonly) returns ≥ 0
}
- put_possible(f) { true if fopen(filename, bits file o wronly) returns ≥ 0
}
- bin_possible(f) { always false for now }
- compressible(f) { always true - indicates variable length lines }
- reset_possible(f) { always true for now }
- set_possible(f) { always true for now because lseek() }
- backspace_possible(f) { always true for now because lseek() }
- reidf_possible(f) { always false for now because Algol 68 transput
doesn't provide rename() }

Does this sound like an acceptable start?


-- 
Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com

C'est ma façon de parler.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/algol68/attachments/20260520/a4f1da28/attachment-0001.htm>