UNIX, C, Perl

[Pilcrow]

Given that UNIX, including networking, is almost entirely coded in C,
how come so many things are almost impossible in ordinary C? Examples:
Network and internet access, access to UNIX interprocess controls and
communication, locale determination, EBCDIC/ASCII discrimination, etc.

Almost all of these are easy in Perl. Why isn't there a mechanism like
perl modules to allow easy extentions for facilities like these? Isn't
anyone working on this problem? or is it all being left for proprietary
systems?

[Willem]

jacob navia wrote:
) Richard Heathfield wrote:
)
) [snip]
)
) I asked you a question Heathfield, a question that you conveniently
) snipped away.
)
) I repeat it:
) How would *you* solve the above problem?

You're begging the question.
Richard never claimed (in this thread at least) that your
solution was bad in any way.

And here's the question *you* never answered.
The question that *is* relevant:

Why do you argue about changing C *here*, in this newsgroup ?
SaSW, Willem
--
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT

[jacob navia]

Willem wrote:

jacob navia wrote:
) Richard Heathfield wrote:
)
) [snip]
)
) I asked you a question Heathfield, a question that you conveniently
) snipped away.
)
) I repeat it:
) How would *you* solve the above problem?

You're begging the question.
Richard never claimed (in this thread at least) that your
solution was bad in any way.

He just snipped the question. Obviously if I asked the question
again I wanted to know what he thinks.

I did not say that he answered...

And here's the question *you* never answered.
The question that *is* relevant:

Why do you argue about changing C *here*, in this newsgroup ?

Because this group discusses the C language obviously.

I presented my ideas to the comp.std.c group, many times.

I discuss them there too.
--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32

[Malcolm McLean]

"Ben Bacarisse" <be********@bsb .me.ukwrote in message

This is the elephant in the room as far as C is concerned. Because
there is no agreed way to program a flexible array, a list or a map,
everyone writes their own, or uses a published one that is
incompatible with all the other published ones out there. It is often
a lot of work just to coax two libraries to work together.

I still have some "give me 64" mugs left. I trust you are now joining the
campaign for 64 bit ints.

--
Free games and programming goodies.
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~bgy1mm

[Pilcrow]

On Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:07:00 +0200, jacob navia <ja***@nospam.c om>
wrote:

>Richard Heathfield wrote:

>Pilcrow said:

>>Given that UNIX, including networking, is almost entirely coded in C,
how come so many things are almost impossible in ordinary C?

I don't know of anything computable that isn't computable in ordinary C.

>>Examples:
Network and internet access,

C allows you to call library functions that provide these features, but
doesn't go so far as to make their provision mandatory. (Otherwise, you
couldn't have a C implementation on a system that didn't have internet
access - and that would be silly.)

Exactly.

There are many implementations of networking, from
Windows sockets, BSD sockets, Netware, USB networking,
Wan, LANs, etc.

To make mandatory the usage of some kind of network would
be a foolish. Besides, you can do things in C that are MUCH
more cumbersome in perl. For instance an ftp transfer in Perl
looks like this:
----------------------------------------------perl
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
require('ftpli b.pl');
use strict;
my(@dirList) ;
ftp::debug('ON ');
ftp::open('ftp .cis.ufl.edu', 'anonymous', 'm******@planet .net') or die($!);
@dirList = ftp::list('pub/perl/faq');
ftp::cwd('/pub/perl/faq');
ftp::binary( );
ftp::gets('FAQ .gz');
@dirList = ftp::list();
print("list of /pub/perl/faq\n");
foreach (@dirList) {
print("\t$_\n" );
}
@dirList = ftp::dir();
print("list of /pub/perl/faq\n");
foreach (@dirList) {
print("\t$_\n" );
}
ftp::debug() ;
ftp::cwd('/pub/perl/faq');
@dirList = ftp::list();
print("list of /pub/perl/faq\n");
foreach (@dirList) {
print("\t$_\n" );
}
----------------------------------------------perl

You seem to be using a very old version of perl - perhaps even perl 4.
And no perl user would use that style. The two lines before the last
bracket, for example, would probably be coded like this:

print "\t$_\n" for @dirlist;

See the modules Net::FTP or WWW::Mechanize or LWP::Simple for modern
methods.

>Using lcc-win the above program looks like this:

----------------------------------------------C (lcc-win)
int returncode = GetFtpUrl("ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/faq","faq");
----------------------------------------------C (lcc-win)

You can not have tested that, since there is no such directory at the
site of the University of Florida.

However, here is a one-line perl script I've actually tested:

perl -MLWP::Simple -e 'getstore "http://www.google.com" ,"demo.html" '

You type it on the command line. It retrieves Google's home page and
stores it in the file demo.html .
But you need the module LWP::Simple to run it

(snip)

>Exactly. C has "modules", and the interface is simple and efficient.
There is an enormous amount of C libraries around.

I am so glad to hear that. Perhaps someone would be so kind as to post
a list of them? At least the more important ones. URL's would be nice.

[Keith Thompson]

jacob navia <ja***@nospam.c omwrites:

Keith Thompson wrote:

>jacob navia <ja***@nospam.c omwrites:
[...]

>>They will never do anything since their main objective is to preserve
C as a language that should run legacy code with no new development,
as Mr Gwyn explained in comp.std.c.

I don't recall Doug Gwyn ever saying that, and I'm certainly not
going
to take your word for it. Please post the Message-ID of an article in
which he said that.

The 26 september 1997, Dennis Yelle had the idea of asking in comp.std.c:

Can we get rid of gets()?

Mr Gwyn defended keeping gets() in the standard document.

And he won. gets() is still in the C99 document.

Ok.

I started a similar discussion last year, 11 years later and Mr Gwyn
was again in the group of the ultra-conservatives that want to keep
gets(), trigraphs, and vehemently deny that ANY changes should
be done.

Ok.

He repeated the same position in 2004, when I started again a discussion
about gets().

Ok.

And in 2007 he repeated his position. No changes, gets belong to the
language.

Ok.

The same for ALL the proposals to change a minimal part of the
language. Not even blatant errors like trigraphs.

Ok.

Please post the Message-ID of an article in which Doug Gwyn said that
the main objective of the C standard committee is to preserve C as a
language that should run legacy code with no new development.

Given your track record for inferring people's opinions from what they
write, I don't believe that Doug holds or has ever expressed that
opinion or anything like it. More specifically, I'm sure he thinks
that C should continue to be a language that can deal with legacy code
(so do I; do you?); I don't believe for a moment that he thinks there
should be no new develpment in C.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keit h) ks***@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

[jameskuyper]

jacob navia wrote:

Willem wrote:

....

Why do you argue about changing C *here*, in this newsgroup ?

Because this group discusses the C language obviously.

I presented my ideas to the comp.std.c group, many times.

I discuss them there too.

While such a suggestion is on-topic in that group, it is still not the
right place to make your proposal. Only a small number of committee
members participate in that group. If you really want anything to
change, you have to present your proposal to the committee, or at
least convince one of the committee members that your ideas have
sufficient merit to for that committee member to present them for you.
The committee members ore the ONLY ones who can actually make it
happen - nothing you say to anyone else will have much effect.

Further piece of advice: if and when you actually make your proposals
to the committee, please try to lay off on the slanderous accusations
that pepper your typical postings in this newsgroup. Even if those
accusations were true, you couldn't possibly expect accusations of
idiocy, incompetence, and laziness to make the people you so accuse
more willing to cooperate with you, could you?

[Antoninus Twink]

On 3 Sep 2008 at 20:07, Pilcrow wrote:

On Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:07:00 +0200, jacob navia <ja***@nospam.c om>
wrote:

>>Exactly. C has "modules", and the interface is simple and efficient.
There is an enormous amount of C libraries around.

I am so glad to hear that. Perhaps someone would be so kind as to post
a list of them? At least the more important ones. URL's would be nice.

http://packages.debian.org/stable/libdevel/

[jameskuyper]

jacob navia wrote:

Keith Thompson wrote:

jacob navia <ja***@nospam.c omwrites:

[...]

They will never do anything since their main objective is to preserve
C as a language that should run legacy code with no new development,
as Mr Gwyn explained in comp.std.c.

I don't recall Doug Gwyn ever saying that, and I'm certainly not going
to take your word for it. Please post the Message-ID of an article in
which he said that.

To which you responded (without presenting even a single Message-ID):

The 26 september 1997, Dennis Yelle had the idea of asking in comp.std.c:

Can we get rid of gets()?

Mr Gwyn defended keeping gets() in the standard document.

And he won. gets() is still in the C99 document.

I started a similar discussion last year, 11 years later and Mr Gwyn
was again in the group of the ultra-conservatives that want to keep
gets(), trigraphs, and vehemently deny that ANY changes should
be done.

He repeated the same position in 2004, when I started again a discussion
about gets().

And in 2007 he repeated his position. No changes, gets belong to the
language.

The same for ALL the proposals to change a minimal part of the
language. Not even blatant errors like trigraphs.

You've cited a lot of evidence suggesting that Doug Gwyn opposes
particular changes to the standard. That was never in question. Any
reasonable person will, occasionally, oppose particular changes to the
standard, and sometimes for reasons that are wrong. Doug has
occasionally also spoken in favor of particular changes to the
standard. Personally, I favor more changes to the standard than he
does, and fewer than you do. However, that's all very different from
your slanderous claim that

They will never do anything since their main objective is to preserve
C as a language that should run legacy code with no new development,

Nothing you've cited above says anything about "no new development".
Where, precisely, did Doug Gwyn (or anyone else on the committee)
express THAT opinion? And this time, please provide precise message
identification.

[jacob navia]

ja*********@ver izon.net wrote:

While such a suggestion is on-topic in that group, it is still not the
right place to make your proposal. Only a small number of committee
members participate in that group. If you really want anything to
change, you have to present your proposal to the committee, or at
least convince one of the committee members that your ideas have
sufficient merit to for that committee member to present them for you.
The committee members ore the ONLY ones who can actually make it
happen - nothing you say to anyone else will have much effect.

I need 10 thousand euros (15 000 US$) to buy the AFNOR
(French ISO organization) to present my proposal after
I got sponsored by some company.

I do not have either the sponsors nor that amount of money.

And I have repeated this MANY times, to you and to others.

And you STILL tell me to present proposals to ISO.

I do not have the financial resources for that is that clear?

Further piece of advice: if and when you actually make your proposals
to the committee, please try to lay off on the slanderous accusations
that pepper your typical postings in this newsgroup. Even if those
accusations were true, you couldn't possibly expect accusations of
idiocy, incompetence, and laziness to make the people you so accuse
more willing to cooperate with you, could you?

I have never said that they are idiots or lazy or whatever. You
are just lying (as you often do)
--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32

[Flash Gordon]

jacob navia wrote, On 03/09/08 22:18:

ja*********@ver izon.net wrote:

>jacob navia wrote:

>>Keith Thompson wrote:
jacob navia <ja***@nospam.c omwrites:

[...]

They will never do anything since their main objective is to preserve
C as a language that should run legacy code with no new development,

^^

>>>>as Mr Gwyn explained in comp.std.c.
I don't recall Doug Gwyn ever saying that, and I'm certainly not going
to take your word for it. Please post the Message-ID of an article in
which he said that.

To which you responded (without presenting even a single Message-ID):

This was written by Gwyn the 10/4/2007 7:43 PM, with Message ID
<47************ ***@null.netThr ead name "C needs a BOOST"

<snip>

The only real use for such a library would be for new program
development, once the learning hurdle has been overcome. Much

^^^^

new development really ought to use higher-level languages in
the first place.

<snip>

Yes, you read correctly.
"Much new development really ought to use higher level languages"

^^^^

than C.

This is in essence what I said.

No, it is very different from what you claimed he said. Much freight is
transported by ship, but that does not prevent freight from being
transported by rail, road and plane. Most Chinese speakers live in
China, yet I hear Chinese being spoken in England by people living in
England.

<snip>

My opinion, based on considerable experience in this area, is that
C remains the best choice for much "systems implementation" work,
but that it is more cost-effective to use other, higher-level
languages for many "applicatio ns".

^^^^

Many is not all.

<snip>

It is (in my opinion) a mistake to try to push C (in any variant)
as a general solution for all programming problems. It's a

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

good choice for the systems programming that it was designed for,
although it still has deficiencies even for that. I would rather
the time spent discussing directions for C concentrate more on
remedies for its remaining deficiencies for systems work than on
trying to support applications where there are better choices.

Are you claiming that C should be used as a general solution to ALL
programming problems?

He says "it is not what I said"... then repeats everything again.

Nowhere in what you have quoted has he said that no new development or
applications should be done in C. He has also stated that he does want
some changes to the language, for how can the deficiencies be remedied
without changing the language?

C is good only for systems work, etc etc,

You are miss-quoting here what you have quoted above.

new development or
application dveelopment should be done in better languages, etc.

He said much, not all.
--
Flash Gordon