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From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx,comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Follow the true Way -- A PLEA!! for good program design.
Keywords: AREXX , *
Message-ID: <2239@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 17 Nov 90 18:58:36 GMT
Lines: 52
Return-Path: <lpami!lphillips>
To: van-bc!rnews

In <1990Nov17.080652.28036@watcsc.waterloo.edu>, psop@watcsc.waterloo.edu (Paul Sop) writes:
>I want everyone, from now on, everywhere, who owns an amiga, to, when
>they write AREXX programs (note! I didn't say 'Scripts'), include the
>following **EXTREMELY IMPORTANT** line:
>
>call close 'STDIN';call open 'STDIN','*','R'
>
>NOTE the '*'.  If more amiga programs used this method of reading input,
>life would be considerably better, easier, and all round more fun.

That's fine for some things I suppose, but breaks other things. I have a little
ARexx program I call 'hilite', that lets me see text patterns in an alternate
colour. I typically use it in a pipe, so that I can see the context of the
output, which is a lot better at times than using grep and getting only single
lines out. Here's the program...


 /* hilite.rexx - hilite a substring
    usage is from stdin, with pipe.
    hilites the argument string
 */
parse arg x
do forever
 parse pull ln
 if EOF(stdin) then exit
 if pos(translate(x),translate(ln)) = 0 then
  say ln
 else
  do
   call writech(stdout,substr(ln,1,pos(translate(x),translate(ln))-1))
   call writech(stdout,'1b'x || '[33m' || x || '1b'x || '[31m')
   call writech(stdout,substr(ln,pos(translate(x),translate(ln))+ length(x)) || '0a'x)
  end
end

An example of calling it...

     dir all | hilite foo

Using your open/close stdin line breaks it.

Other than the special cases, though. it's a good idea.

-larry

--
The only things to survive a nuclear war will be cockroaches and IBM PCs.
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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