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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hplabsz!mayer
From: mayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.lisp.x
Subject: Re: exploratory system for unix system calls/facilities
Message-ID: <4139@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 11 Oct 89 20:12:43 GMT
References: <1753@xyzzy.UUCP>
Reply-To: mayer@hplabs.hp.com (Niels Mayer)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Software Technology Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
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In article <1753@xyzzy.UUCP> kan@tom.dg.com () writes:
>Does anyone know of an interactive environment for playing around with
>all those wonderful Unix system calls?
>
>I guess what I'd like is something that will let me try things out without 
>having to write/compile/debug C code.  For example, a simple client/server 
>using shared memory, semaphores, etc. implemented in a few Lisp expressions 
>would run in a couple of terminals (or windows).
>Doing this junk in C, needless to say, is a real pain in the butt.

I've added a few "easy" unix system (e.g. system(3), popen(3) etc) calls to
xlisp in my WINTERP X11/Motif application prototyping, development and
delivery environment. Furthermore, in WINTERP, the xlisp read-eval-loop has
been transformed into a lisp server allowing for clients to send
lisp-expressions from other applications distributed across the network. Is
this what you mean by a simple client/server? Haven't touched (nor do i
want to get my hands dirty with) shared memory, semaphores, etc. But then
again, I'm building this system as a platform for our research and
experiments in multimedia computing and groupware, so our aims might be
different.

Mostly, I've been concentrating on making a clean "object-oriented"
interface to the Motif widgets. By the time I release WINTERP, it may also
have an interface to the Xtoolkit's XtAddInput() routine which will provide
for a simple way of having WINTERP maintain open connections to multiple
network clients; intefacing the XtAddWorkProc() routine should allow for
simple internal process scheduling.

I'd certainly be interested in getting any enhancements to xlisp for
supporting some of the uglier aspects of unix hacking in a cleaner fashion.
My winterp code should be publically available by November 24th, and will
hopefully be included on the X11r4 contrib tape.

>I recall that Byte had a description of XLisp extensions on OS/2 that 
>allowed you to use system services interactively.

I haven't seen this. Which issue?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	    Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com
		  Human-Computer Interaction Department
		       Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
			      Palo Alto, CA.
				   *