Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!sei!bwb
From: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: How are people developing?
Message-ID: <7918@fy.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 18 Jul 90 15:21:19 GMT
References: <6034@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1990Jul15.195557.16913@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1990Jul17.133203.1035@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 30

In article <1990Jul17.133203.1035@chinet.chi.il.us> patrickd@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Deupree) writes:
<gone>
>
>Getting a directory listing is really somewhat simple.  Basically, since we
>support interrupt 21 (the DOS interrupt) you can use this to get a directory
>listing.  As a matter of fact, on our BBS I think you'll find a file that will
>be very helpful in creating your program.  I know it has the name "dir" in
>it someplace, but I don't remember the exact name of the file.  I'll track
>it down and post the code to find a directory list.
>
I needed a short program to walk the directory structure of my hard disk. I
ended up doing it in Turbo C, because they provided all the dos system
calls in a convenient form (findfirst, findnext, chdir, etc.).  I can do the
same in actor but I have to call dos direct and work the kludge of getting
the right addresses in the right registers (well documented thou). Is there
a source of classes available that has all the dos calls in a directly
useable form?  

Actor has a basic appeal (OO, MS windows, event driven) but I have not seen
the explosion of classes and libraries (PD, share, commerical) that would
make the package immediately useful for simple and not so simple 
applications.  I can code in Actor as fast as in C++ (and TP 5.5) but don't
have the methods for simple tasks, so I go back to C or Pascal.  I am
not developing windows applications, I am solving problems, but would like
to do it with the elegance of a MS windows application.

* Bruce Benson                   + Internet  - bwb@sei.cmu.edu +       +
* Software Engineering Institute + Compuserv - 76226,3407      +    >--|>
* Carnegie Mellon University     + Voice     - 412 268 8496    +       +
* Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890       +                             +  US Air Force