Re: Missing core functions

[Gary Houston]

> From: Martin Grabmueller <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 10:30:32 +0100 (MET)
> 
> Hello list,
> 
> I think the following procedures should be implemented in Guile:
> 
> chroot
> flock
> getlogin
> getpriority
> glob
> ioctl
> setpgrp
> setpriority
> wait

> (I stumbled over them while going through the Camel Book).

Two are supported as setpgid and waitpid.

> I don't know if they were intentionally left out, because they are not
> posix.  Please tell me if that was the reason, or if they should not
> be included because they are not portable enough, or if they are
> consisdered code bloat.

There's no reason, just nobody got around to it.  Portability
is a problem, but it's probably good enough as a first attempt to
support the most modern version of each interface and leave it
undefined if configure doesn't find it.

To reduce the perception of code bloat it's probably about time to
place the system call wrappers into separate modules.  This can be
done without moving them out of libguile -- see the (ice-9 rdelim)
experiment.

When adding new interfaces it's a good time to consider what modules
could be created, since there's no backwards compatibility problem
with requiring a use-modules statment.

> Otherwise, I would like to implement them.

That would be great.  Good luck with ioctl.

> Additionally, I would like to see the following procedures:
> 
> crypt
> getpass
> fnmatch
> 
> The crypt procedure would require linking to libcrypt (under GNU/Linux
> at least, I will check Solaris this afternoon), which might be
> undesireable.

Presumably configure could sort it out.