Re: thoughts on ports

[Noah Lavine]

Hello,

On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 3:15 PM, Mike Gran <address@hidden> wrote:
> Anyway, here's an idea.  Let's call the C code for ports 'base ports'.
>
> 1. Refactor the C reader so that it took on the responsibility of
> storing the putbacked (ungotton?) characters.
>
> 2. This would let you simplify the base ports to make read, write,
> and unget into those operations that the underlying device could
> provide.  During bootstrap, a read-only base file port would error on
> unget, for example.  Base ports would not longer have pushback buffers.
> There would be no such thing as string base ports since they aren't
> a device.
>
> 3. Then you could get through bootstrap and create scheme ports on top
> of the base port primitives.

Would it be possible to make this simpler (at least for now) by
changing steps 1 and 2 as follows?

1. Refactor ports code so read, write, unget are separate operations
with Scheme interfaces (where supported).

2. Define the standard Scheme port type in C, using the
read/write/unget primitives, so that the C reader can use it during
startup

That gives you the flexibility of having the primitives around, but
lets you avoid the rewrite of the C reader.

Noah