Re: Back & Forth - 4tH I/O and You

On 19/05/2025 7:44 pm, Hans Bezemer wrote:

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However, the FILE wordset isn't simple. It's an entirely new API you have to get familiar with. It might be easy to map when your underlying implementation relies on C, it might be easy to map if you have your own, internal API that happens to fit nicely on that idea (or simply be very versatile) - but I doubt it's trivial to map if you have to build it up from the ground.

I'd question that.  File-handles, open/close, read/write, seek seem pretty basic disk
operations to me.  I've seen other file-systems e.g. MBASIC but AFAIR they weren't as
easy or as flexible as ANS.  Now CP/M's DOS API is no drop-in for the ANS' functions
but I implemented it. ... Ok, so it took me 20 years to find the courage.

An still then - since it has virtually no relationship with console I/O (like TYPE, ACCEPT, ., .", etc.) you have to learn like a completely different language to use it. So IMHO it fails on the "simplicity" qualification.

Those are console functions which traditionally went to serial ports and bear little
resemblance to disk file I/O.  For implementer it's not simpler - it's a layer on top
of DOS functions.  Even as an end-user I'm not sure I'd like it.  How does one handle
seeks, read and writing to the same file etc?  The ANS functions were designed to
handle random access.  Console functions were not.

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