Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!sdcsvax!ucbvax!jade!eris!mwm
From: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: why "gmtime" but not "read" and "write"?
Message-ID: <5219@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 26-Sep-87 06:09:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: jade.5219
Posted: Sat Sep 26 06:09:37 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Sep-87 10:35:37 EDT
References: <706@sugar.UUCP> <8617@utzoo.UUCP> <813@sugar.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 38

In article <813@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
<The only C compiler I know of that didn't implement open, close, read, and
<write was the original BDS-C library on the Z-80. It implemented fopen and
<fclose with open/close semantics, fprintf with the first argument being an
<integer, and so on. I suppose this was a well-written compiler.

My memory and yours don't agree with each other. I don't have a manual
any more, but I could call Leor and ask. I remember cussing at the BDS
C read/write/open/close because the were tied directly to the CP/M DOS
calls, so that the "how much to read" parameter told how many
CP/M disk records to read.

Likewise, I recall the that the f* routines looked like the "portable
I/O library." I could be mistaken, because I only saw that briefly on
the 370 port of the v6 C compiler/library.

Of course, BDS C was the second C compiler outside the Unix
environment. Leor gets to use the excuse that there wasn't a push to
use Unix-like I/O libraries at the time.

Finally calling BDS C a C compiler is stretching things a little.
While closer to C than Tiny-C or Small-C, it was still missing some
important feature - like statics and initializers. It was a great tool
for building code for z80s and 808[05]s (better than whitesmiths), it
wasn't a tool you'd want to try to port code to.

For another example with "broken" read/write routines, consider the
Software Toolworks C/80 for CP/M-80 and the Heath z80 OS (whatever it
was called). Worked just like the Unix versions, except that the
number of characters read was rounded down to the nearest record
boundary (128 for CP/M, 256 for Heath).

	<mike
--
I know the world is flat.				Mike Meyer
Don't try tell me that it's round.			mwm@berkeley.edu
I know the world stands still.				ucbvax!mwm
Don't try to make it turn around.			mwm@ucbjade.BITNET