H[y]stery behind the structure name FILE?

[Suman]

I don't seem to recall having seen any other structure defined in the
standard libraries
that has an all uppercase name. FILE, is a glaring exception. Does
anyone know as
to why this is so?

I am not too sure if this is the right place for this question, so I
beg your pardon if I've
wandered off-topic.

Regards,
Suman

[Richard Tobin]

In article <11*********************@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.c om>,
Suman <sk*****@gmail.comwrote:

>I don't seem to recall having seen any other structure defined in the
standard libraries that has an all uppercase name. FILE, is a glaring
exception. Does anyone know as to why this is so?

Historical reasons. It was a macro in the first implementations, see:

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/u...e/stdio.h.html

Incidentally, FILE is not required to be a struct.

-- Richard
--
"Consideration shall be given to the need for as many as 32 characters
in some alphabets" - X3.4, 1963.

[Suman]

On Apr 19, 6:51 pm, [e-mail] (Richard Tobin) wrote:

In article <[e-mail].c om>,

Suman <[e-mail]:

I don't seem to recall having seen any other structure defined in the
standard libraries that has an all uppercase name. FILE, is a glaring
exception. Does anyone know as to why this is so?

Historical reasons. It was a macro in the first implementations, see:

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/u...e/stdio.h.html

Incidentally, FILE is not required to be a struct.

Of course! That makes sense. I vaguely remember having read this
somewhere.

Thanks a lot for refreshing my memory.

Regards,
Suman

[CBFalconer]

Suman wrote:

>
I don't seem to recall having seen any other structure defined in the
standard libraries
that has an all uppercase name. FILE, is a glaring exception. Does
anyone know as
to why this is so?

I am not too sure if this is the right place for this question, so I
beg your pardon if I've
wandered off-topic.

Notice the funny line ending sequences in this quote. You can
avoid this if you simply restrict your output lines to be under 72
chars (67 is even better).

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<http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit043.html>

"A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much."
-- Francis Crick, co-discover of DNA
"There is nothing more amazing than stupidity in action."
-- Thomas Matthews

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