Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:31663 alt.lang.cfutures:44
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,alt.lang.cfutures
Subject: STDIO (Re: TRUE and FALSE)
Message-ID: <38Q5QG2@xds13.ferranti.com>
Date: 7 Sep 90 01:36:30 GMT
References: <17632@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 45

In article <17632@haddock.ima.isc.com> karl@kelp.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
> Fine; functions that have that property can be declared with a type other than
> "bool".  Functions that don't have any useful value to return on success can
> and should return TRUE.  (fgets() was another mistake.)

Fgets() has a useful value to return: the number of characters read. A
0 length read from fgets should be an EOF (think about it).

For that matter, the whole stdio suite is fubar. But, it's a standard.
Perhaps a new library could be designed in alt.lang.cfutures

	FILE *openf(name, mode);
	char *name;
	int mode;	/* From fcntl.h */

	int readf(fp, buf, len);
	FILE *fp;
	char *buf;
	int len;

	int readlnf(fp, buf, len);
	FILE *fp;
	char *buf;
	int len;

	int parsef(fp, fmt, args...)
	FILE *fp;
	char *fmt;

	int readln(buf, len);
	char *buf;
	int len;

	int formatf(fp, fmt, args...);
	FILE *fp;
	char *fmt;

	int formats(buf, len, fmt, args...);
	char *buf;
	int len;
	char *fmt;

Fp, when present, always comes first. Buffers are always associated with
a length. Consistent rules for the syntax would make things a lot easier
to remember.
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
peter@ferranti.com