Xref: utzoo comp.lang.modula2:783 comp.lang.misc:1446
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!iuvax!pur-ee!pur-phy!hal
From: hal@pur-phy (Hal Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Modula2's godawful IO.
Keywords: NEW, DISPOSE, ALLOCATE, DEALLOCATE
Message-ID: <1108@pur-phy>
Date: 15 Apr 88 12:19:50 GMT
References: <764@ndsuvax.UUCP> <535@m10ux.UUCP> <560@taux01.UUCP> <1418@daimi.UUCP>
Reply-To: hal@newton.physics.purdue.edu.UUCP (Hal Chambers)
Organization: Purdue Univ. Physics Dept., W. Lafayette, IN
Lines: 29

In article <1418@daimi.UUCP> erja@saturn.UUCP (Erik Jacobsen) writes:

>The NEW/DISPOSE-procedures in MODULA-2 are special in the sense that
>they can't be written as normal procedures. The compiler translates
>statements with NEW/DISPOSE into appropriate calls to ALLOCATE/DEALLOCATE.
>ALLOCATE/DEALLOCATE must be available procedures, usually imported
>from Storage.

But you can write your own ALLOCATE/DEALLOCATE.

>A PASCAL-like write-procedure, with a variable number of parameters with
>different types, can't be written as a normal procedure. But in a
>similar way the compiler could change a statement like:

>     write( some_cardinal , some_string , some_whatever)

>into calls to WriteCard, WriteString and WriteWhatever. (Some of these
>procedures have extra parameters that must be specified in some way.)

>A change like this seems to be close to the "spirit" of MODULA-2.

>Any comments?

I agree.  Most of the complaints I've seen about IO in Modula-2
can be rectified by writing your own IO module.  At least M2 LETS
you write your own routines!  I wrote something in the spirit of
Software Tools for my own IO package.

Hal Chambers