Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!apple!amdahl!oliveb!amiga!boing!dale
From: dale@boing.UUCP (Dale Luck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Proposal for new DOS calls
Message-ID: <482@boing.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 88 16:54:44 GMT
References: <8811072046.AA04999@postgres.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: dale@boing.UUCP (Dale Luck)
Organization: Boing, Milpitas, Ca.
Lines: 35

In article dillon@POSTGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
>	There are several lackings in DOS that make interactive handling of
>file handles difficult.  For one, there is no way to determine whether data
>is pending (e.g. via SER: AUX:, interactive PIPE: etc...) without calling
>Read() or WaitForChar().

I agree, the DOS is lacking here. We need a consistent concept of
non-blocking i/o through files.

>bool = SetRBlockMode(fh, mode)
>	0- return less than requested or 0 if no/little read data available
> (def)	1- block if no read data available
>	2- (atomic non-blocking): either read everything or nothing.

I prefer '0' being the default mode, so maybe just renumbering is inorder.

>bool = SetRSignal(fh, signo, amount),bool = SetWSignal(fh, signo, amount)
>	-1 disables the function.  Otherwise, set the signal # that should
>	occur when read data is available.

Wow, is someone else trying to design a consistent select() call?

>amnt = GetRDataReady(fh) ,amnt = GetWSpaceAvail(fh)

All nice things I wish I had when writing my stdio support for X-Windows
and sockets.

>bool = ShutDown(fh, how)

So tell me, Matt, is your next project a socket library maybe?

-- 
Dale Luck     Boing, Inc. {uunet!cbmvax|pyramid}!amiga!boing!dale
Although I do contract work for Amiga-LosGatos, my opinions probably
don't represent those of Commodore or its management or its engineers,
but I think the world would be a better place if they did.