Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom and streams

[Stephen Wilson]

C Y <address@hidden> writes:
> Are they mutually exclusive?  

In a sense, yes.  Take a look at the Simple streams doc and see how
the traditional common lisp functions are redefined to support both
approaches. The starting point would probably be here:

 http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/6.2/doc/streams.htm#cl-funs-2

> Perhaps it would be useful to have both available, as I can see both
> byte-based operations and abstract objects being of interest.

One of the main advantages of Simple streams is that they do not
require a call through a generic function to do things like read-char,
write-byte, etc.  Its not that Gray streams cant do these things, its
just that the interface is somewhat heavy.

> I'm guessing at the current stage the Simple Streams approach would be
> more useful, and later on the more abstract objects will become
> interesting.

I tend to agree.  I ported the SBCL Gray streams code over to GCL this
morning in the form of a user library (that is, its not redefining CL
functions or sub-classing CL's stream type -- its portable code similar
to Corman Lisps implementation).  Next will be to attempt the same
with SBCL's Simple stream implementation.  Once both portable versions
are running I can look at how they can be embedded in GCL so as to
take advantage of implementation specifics.  Hopefully a lot of the
details, pros/cons, etc, will become clear by taking that approach.  


Take care,
Steve