Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On 2024-04-01, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com <Muttley@dastardlyhq.com> wrote:

On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 06:49:48 -0300
Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote:

Muttley@dastardlyhq.com writes:
>

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 18:46:50 -0000 (UTC)
Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> wrote:

(defun get-network-interface-list ()
 (open-shared-library "iphlpapi.dll")
 (let ((blk-size 65536) ;; crude!
       (get-adapters-info (foreign-symbol-address "GetAdaptersInfo")))
     (if get-adapters-info
       (%stack-block ((blk blk-size))
         (rlet ((len-inout #>ULONG blk-size))
           (if (zerop (ff-call get-adapters-info :address blk
                                                 :address len-inout
                                                 #>DWORD))
             (loop for ptr = blk then (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Next)
                   until (%null-ptr-p ptr)
                   collecting
                     (let ((alen (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.AddressLength))

>

                           (addr (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Address))
                           (aname (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.AdapterName))
                           (descr (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Description))
                           (iplist (pref ptr

#>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.IpAddressList))

>
                           (type (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Type)))
                       (list type
                             (loop for i below alen
                                   collecting (%get-unsigned-byte addr i)
                                     into mac-bytes
                                   finally
                                     (return (mac-bytes-to-string

mac-bytes)))

>
                             (get-ip-address-list iplist)
                             (%get-cstring aname)
                             (%get-cstring descr))))))))))

>
Ugh. No wonder the language fell out of fashion. Looks like some kind of
hacked up Basic.

>
Fashion and intelligence have never been very good friends.

>
Readability of the flow of control matters. God knows whats going on with
all those nested statements.

I didn't spend a lot of time on that code in the first place, and have
not looked it in over ten years; yet it's trivially easily readable to me.

Anyway, it's in a high level language, yet following a linked list of
structs obtained from a Win32 function, which  the code fetches into
a buffer allocated efficiently on the native stack.

The whole thing is compiled into native code.

CCL's primitives for accessing the C stuff aren't pretty, but they are
helpful. It's nice that it has the parsed information about the struct
offsets, like #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.AdapterName.  I didn't have to define
that anywhere. I remember it was pretty easy to  figure the primtiies
out from CCL's reference documentation. Easy to write, easy to read
a decade later.

--
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
Mastodon: @Kazinator@mstdn.ca