On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 5:48 PM, Robert Goldman <rpgold...@sift.net> wrote: > I am translating some existing code that does something like the following: > > concatenate f1 and f2 > temp file 1 > concatenate f2 and f1 (i.e., reverse concat) > temp file 2 > compute function of temp file 1 > compute function of temp file 2 > return minimum of f(temp file1), f(temp file2) > > I did this using "cat" for which it is more convenient to have the name > of the file than the stream. > > In general, when invoking the shell, the shell "speaks" names, not CL > streams. > > Now, as you said, I could simply replicate the logic of > GET-TEMPORARY-FILE, but since GET-TEMPORARY-FILE pretty much replicates > the interface of mktemp, which the shell wizards consider to be > valuable, I think there's precedent for something like > GET-TEMPORARY-FILE being supplied. Although, perhaps calling it > GET-TEMPORARY-FILENAME would be better. > > Is there some reason it would be inappropriate to export this? > It's an unintentional omission indeed that UIOP/STREAM::GET-TEMPORARY-FILE wasn't exported. I thought I had exported it, but I failed to. The function has existed since 3.1.2 (i.e. the first stable 3.1 release).
Note that in most cases, you'll have cleaner code using WITH-TEMPORARY-FILE, though (also to be considered debugged since 3.1.2). Note that for security reasons, a better (but non-portable) solution would be instead be using mkstemps or mkostemps. —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org When a pamphlet was published entitled "100 Authors Against Einstein", Einstein retorted "If I were wrong, one would be enough."
