Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!usenet
From: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (USENET News Administration)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: BCPL pointers
Message-ID: <27151@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 16 Dec 88 09:40:50 GMT
References: <3631@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: amorando@euler.UUCP (David Ashley)
Organization: U.C. Berkeley EECS CAD Group
Lines: 29

>a BCPL filehandle,
From: amorando@euler.uucp (Alexander R. Morando)
Path: euler!amorando


The obvious answer is multiply by 4, but I'm not sure that's what you want.
The file handles are actually private, and you and I are not supposed to
know about any of the fields used in them. Look at how lousy the stuff is
documented. Nothing beyond the structure itself.

It sounds like you want to copy from filehandle1 to filehandle2 without
using a temporary buffer, i.e. without doing a
Read(fh1,buffer,size);
Write(fh2,buffer,size);
I don't know if it is possible, and my gut reaction is don't try to get around
using the buffer. I can't even think of a reason why you would rather not
use a temporary buffer. Not enough memory? Use a smaller buffer, and wait
longer for the copy.

There is no reason to think that within the file handle is a buffer contain
-ing just the data you want. Most likely, what happens is when you do the
Read command, it goes to the disk and gets the data and uses your buffer as
the storage area. It isn't like it has its own buffer and it is just doing a
copy.

David Ashley
amorando@euler.berkeley.edu

P.S. Sketchy questions cause sketchy answers. Be more specific.