Re: Some ideas on ETH-oberon & Linux/C relationship

On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:06:43 +0200, Andreas F. Borchert wrote:

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.lang.oberon.]
On 2006-07-08, news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Would Linux/C's library be partly a good guide to a suitable
similar Oberon library ?

The libc is certainly not a good guide:

* Buffer overruns are not ruled out by design: gets, sscanf etc.
* Interface inconsistencies: gets vs fgets, fgets vs fscanf (note
the position of the file stream parameter)
* Bad interfaces like that of getchar() whose return code
can be a character or an error code
* Particularly bad buffering system which
- ignores the block structure of underlying file systems, and
- does not support bidirectional buffering
* No provisions exist such that independent libraries can cooperate
with each other in
- signal handling,
- setting up alarms, and
- tracking childs.

See my other thread related to this.
These are problems related to C,
and not related to using libraries.
Perhaps sufficient thought has gone into java to decide, WHAT libraries
to implement, and how to 'group' the 'methods' ?

(Please note that I do not want to bash Ritchie, Kernighan etc. The
libc is history and should be taken as such. It is time to abandon
C and the libc and it does not help to place other systems (like
Java) on top of this historic relic.)

Take a look at
http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
why C and libc win in comparison to Lisp and Scheme.

However, if you are looking for an Oberon library that works as
an replacement of libc, you might want to take a look at Ulm's
Oberon System [1] which is also available for Linux. And it neither
depends on C or libc nor does it contain even a single line of
C code.

Andreas.

[1] http://www.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/oberon/
Linux Gentoo users might want to use
ftp://ftp.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/pub/soft/oberon/ulm/i386/\
ulm-oberon-i386-0.8.6.ebuild.tar.bz2
The packages consist of Oberon sources and binaries which allow to
bootstrap the system. The linux port is still beta and not yet
finished. The core libraries are, however, quite stable since more
than ten years.

I'm quiet satisfied with ETH native oberon, and for inet facilities which
it lacks [eg full featured browser & robust-ppp], linux-ETH-oberon is good.

Convenient transfer between the oberon-'format' and linux allows eg.
download a *.pdf > linux/pdf2 txt > oberon/superior-text-massage.

== Chris Glur.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: LISP OS starting point
    ... build a system atop of Linux kernel that use none of them. ... FFI to libc), or, alternatively, libc reimplementation in Lisp -- ... don't know against exactly which libraries do Lisp implementations ... SBCL's and Allegro CL's startup programs link only to libc ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Comparision of C Sharp and C performance
    ... time slows down as the table fills up. ... All functions in libc which aren't thread safe are marked as so. ... Java doesn't mean it's used effectively. ... Then you prove your libraries are working, ...
    (comp.lang.c)
  • Re: Missing dependencies on shared libraries
    ... If you explicitly include libc on the command line ... libraries don't have libc recorded in them because we don't add -lc on ... Why isn't ldd showing the dependency? ... La prueba mas fehaciente de que existe vida inteligente en otros ...
    (freebsd-hackers)
  • Re: Missing dependencies on shared libraries
    ... On Sat, 15 Apr 2006, M. Warner Losh wrote: ... If you explicitly include libc on the command line ... look at linux shared libraries, you'll note they have dependencies ... libraries don't have libc recorded in them because we don't add -lc on ...
    (freebsd-hackers)
  • Re: dynamic linking vs. static linking
    ... Then there are numerous examples of the interface ... between libc and libthread changing; ... an archive library libthread does not; ... which is why the older shared libraries are ...
    (comp.unix.solaris)