OpenEuphoria

Re: Problems with GET.E

• Posted by "Boehme, Gabriel" <gboehme at POSTOFFICE.MUSICLAND.COM> Nov 15, 1999
• 568 views

Robert Craig wrote (in response to Rod Jackson):

>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't several get() calls
>>in a row supposed to return all of the objects that were
>>printed to the file? ...
>
>get() requires that there be at least one character of
>whitespace (blank, tab or new-line) separating the
>top-level objects in the file.
>
>[...]
>
>>From what I can see, one way to do it
>>would be to have print() put a space after every object
>>it outputs.
>
>What about the users of print() who don't want the
>extra space? Is it that hard to add:
>      puts(fn, ' ')
>to your code?

I don't think it's so much a case of how easy or hard it is to add "puts(fn,
' ')" to a given section of code. For me, at least, it's a case of paired
functions having a not-quite symmetrical relationship. You can call get() as
many times in a row as you like, but for print() you have to throw in a
puts() for a space. The space between top-level objects may be necessary,
and certainly makes sense when you think about it, but it *is* somewhat
inconsistent with Euphoria's otherwise sensible and easy-to-understand
language design, IMO.

This is not limited to the get()/print() pair of functions, either -- Jason
Gade recently pointed out (11/12/1999; Subject: Euphoria features) that
position()/get_position() have a similarly non-symmetrical relationship.
Another (possibly imperfect) example which springs to mind would be the
video_config()/text_rows()/graphics_mode() family of routines.

In any event, for the immediate future, this is probably the best solution
for the problem in question:

global procedure put(integer fn, object data)
   print(fn, data)
   puts(fn, ' ')   -- or '\n', either one will work
end procedure

This way, we have the symmetrically-paired routines get() and put(). This
enables those who wish to perform multiple get() calls against a file to
have a self-contained procedure to write their data out to that file,
without forcing the users of print() to use up an extra byte.


Hep yadda,
Gabriel Boehme

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