Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!motcsd!xdos!doug
From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: DMA in VM
Message-ID: <567@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 5 Dec 89 16:26:06 GMT
References: <14059@grebyn.com> <839@tardis.Tymnet.COM> <1989Dec4.154624.22658@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 20

In article <1989Dec4.154624.22658@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu> 33014-18@sjsumcs.SJSU.EDU (Eduardo Horvath) writes:
>  But I don't think that the stdio library should be part of the
>language.  The OS has the best knowledge about how to optimize disk IO,
>so it should handle the buffering.

You mean the stdio library *implementation* shouldn't be part of the
language. It has been quite advantageous to C that the stdio library
*interface definition* has been part of the language. And it can hide
memory mapped files pretty easily; I've implemented such myself in the
last year.

(C used to use the "portable i/o library", which was much less clean
in many ways. Some language lawyers claim that these libraries are
not part of C itself, but to my mind this is useless philosophizing.
For all practical purposes, when the stdio library replaced the portable
i/o library, the C language itself was changed fairly radically.)
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt		{pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug
Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow		Professional Wildeyed Visionary