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From: jans@tekchips.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Communication with the outside world
Message-ID: <1709@tekchips.TEK.COM>
Date: Sat, 19-Sep-87 21:49:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekchips.1709
Posted: Sat Sep 19 21:49:13 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 20:45:43 EDT
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 41

<<<Ideally we would want to be able... to communicate with (and control!) 
foreign processes.  Currently this is possible only in Tektronix' 
implementation, so far as I know.>>>

This is one of the first things I put in an image:

	Smalltalk at: #Ksh put:
		(OSFilter openOn: '/bin/ksh' withArguments: #('-i')).

Then any application can simply "nextPutAll:" and "nextAvailable" to 
communicate with Unix processes, using wildcards and I/O redirection and any 
other shell fancies needed.  We provide examples for using an OSFilter with sed 
and cpp in order to parse an arbitrary ".h" file into a Dictionary of 
symbol-value Associations.

Another way we've tried to make Smalltalk and Unix get along is to allow 
standard input to file in.  This allows Smalltalk to be used inside a Makefile! 
 This aids considerably when dealing with multi-person projects, allowing 
automatic generation of images, as shown in this Makefile fragment:

.st.im:
	@echo "!SystemDictionary methodsFor: 
'time-versions'!\nversionNumber\n"	'"Return the version number of this release 
of Tektronix Smalltalk-80."\n\n\	"^'$(@:.im=)'! !\n(Smalltalk 
snapshotPrimitive: '$@') isNil\n\tifTrue: [Smalltalk quit].\nSmalltalk 
postSnapshot.\nSmalltalk startUp!" | cat $< - | smalltalk

(Warning!  Line breaks have been automagically inserted!)  When you type "make 
X2.3.6.im", make looks for a file named "X2.3.6.st" and files it into Smalltalk 
using "cat".  When that file-in is finished, the method that defines the 
version number is updated, the updated image "X2.3.6.im" is written out, and 
smalltalk is exited.

In addition, each Unix system call is accessible from within Tektronix 
Smalltalk.  We took care to use naming conventions designed to make the use of 
such calls easy.  In short, if you can do it in C, you can do it in Tek 
Smalltalk!

:::::: Software Productivity Technologies    ---    Smalltalk   Project ::::::
:::::: Jan Steinman N7JDB	Box 500, MS 50-470	(w)503/627-5881 ::::::
:::::: jans@tekcrl.TEK.COM	Beaverton, OR 97077	(h)503/657-7703 ::::::