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From: gumby@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (David Vinayak Wallace)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: trivial portability (was: Relationship between C and C++)
Keywords: portability myth lisp
Message-ID: <GUMBY.90Mar22134720@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 22 Mar 90 21:47:20 GMT
References: <EGB2327xds13@ficc.uu.net> <8432@hubcap.clemson.edu>
	<6515@eos.UUCP> <2944@castle.ed.ac.uk> <D_D27L1xds13@ficc.uu.net>
	<970@mti.mti.com>
Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
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In-Reply-To: adrian@mti.mti.com's message of 22 Mar 90 18:55:53 GMT


   Date: 22 Mar 90 18:55:53 GMT
   From: adrian@mti.mti.com (Adrian McCarthy)

   Exercise for the reader:  write a *portable* program in any language which
   takes a file name as its parameter and returns the modification or creation
   date and time of that file.  Don't use any conditional compilation.

Took longer to trim your message above than it took me to write the
code below (in common lisp):

(defun demo ()
  (format "~&Enter pathname to examine: ")
  (let ((pathname (pathname (readline))))
    (multiple-value-bind (second minute hour day month year)
			 (decode-universal-time (file-write-date pathname))
       (format "The file was written by ~a; on ~D-~D-~D at ~D:~D:~D"
	       (file-author pathname) day month year hour minute second))))