sfio (old topic)

[Arnold D. Robbins arnold@colorstar.com]

I'm cleaning up some old and/or bounced mail.  I meant to send it out
when the topic came up; I don't want to start a flame war about it though...
-------------------

>      I'm working on a large project (Perl) where work is being done to add a
> layer of abstraction to I/O calls within the source. The goal of this is to
> eventually allow us to move the I/O implementation in Perl away from Stdio
> towards something else -- quite probably Sfio.
>      Now until very recently, I had not even heard of Sfio so consequently
> I'm somewhat lost. Could someone out there familiar with both Sfio and Plan
> 9's Bio give me a brief synopsis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of
> the two?

Technical merits aside, I know that sfio is freely redistributable in
source code form. David Korn informs me he plans to have a new version
in the next month or two. I don't know what the distribution policies are
for Bio, but suspect it's more encumbered. I'd be delighted to find out
otherwise though!

At one point sfio was available from netlib; I took a quick look the
other day and couldn't find it though; I've asked DGK to try to find out
for me where it is / will be.

Arnold Robbins		Star Imaging L.L.C.
Phone: +1-404-523-4944	250 Williams Street, Suite 1120, Atlanta, GA 30303
Fax:   +1-404-523-4882	E-mail: arnold.robbins@colorstar.com
"Oh! Look at all those zeros!" --- Chana Robbins, at age 3.5