> On 16 Mar 2018, at 07:05, monty <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 4:01 PM >> From: "Sven Van Caekenberghe" <[email protected]> >> To: "Pharo Development List" <[email protected]> >> Subject: [Pharo-dev] Executive Summary of the recent FileStream Changes >> >> Executive Summary of the recent FileStream Changes >> >> In Pharo 7 Guille Polito recently committed a heroic set of changes that we >> were planning to do for a long time but were afraid to take on. >> >> The idea is to replace a couple of fat, overly complex, multi-functional, >> do-all classes with a set of simpler single purpose classes that can be >> combined as needed. >> >> The classes that we want to get rid of can be found in the package >> DeprecatedFileSystem, in particular FileStream, StandardFileStream, >> MultiByteFileStream, MultiByteBinaryOrTextStream and RWBinaryOrTextStream. > > StandardFileStream, at least, should remain for backwards compatibility and > cross-platform compatibility with Squeak. It's a no-frills, non-decoding, > non-LE normalizing stream that is heavily depended on.
Hmm, maybe. The standard (no pun intended) interface to the file system in Pharo has been FileSystem (FileReference) for quite a while. Many packages dealing with either different Pharo versions or different Smalltalk implementations have constructed their own portability facade (heck, I even did it in ZnFileSystemUtils myself). Note however that some aspects (API, behaviour) about the streams themselves changed as well (no longer being bivalent, separating reading/writing, smaller/simpler API, sometimes no positioning). >> The replacements are can be found in packages Files and >> Zinc-Character-Encoding-Core. >> >> Encoding and decoding characters to and from bytes is done using classes >> that you wrap around a more primitive binary stream. The same goes for >> buffering or translating line endings. >> >> For example, >> >> '/Users/sven/Desktop/foo.txt' asFileReference binaryReadStream. >> >> gives you a ZnBufferedWriteStream wrapping a BinaryWriteStream. >> >> While, >> >> '/Users/sven/Desktop/foo.txt' asFileReference readStream. > > What do you think about this algorithm for encoding detection: > http://www.yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html#id2771184 > > I have an implementation (with tests), if you're interested. (I was waiting > to propose it until the FileSystem API switched over to using Zn streams and > encoders. The TextConverter API doesn't support UTF-32.) I did a primitive one in ZnCharacterEncoding class>>#detectEncoding: but I am not happy with it. I will read your reference and I am certainly interested in seeing your code ! >> gives a ZnCharacterReadStream wrapping a ZnBufferedWriteStream wrapping a >> BinaryWriteStream. >> >> To translate line endings, we would wrap a ZnCharacterWriteStream using a >> ZnCrPortableWriteStream. >> >> There are a couple of more specialised streams to cover special cases (like >> read and writing at the same time). >> >> SocketStream remains another fat, overly complex, multi-functional, do-all >> class, for which usable replacements exist in the form of ZdcSocketStream >> and ZdcSecureSocketStream, which are simpler, cleaner and binary only. >> >> Of course, switching is more than replacing one class with a 100% compatible >> alternative, that would give us the same complex result. The challenge is to >> use a simpler API as well, to rethink how the streams are used. You know, >> KISS. >> >> Of course, we are far from done and need more testing, debugging and help >> from as many people as possible. >> >> Sven >> >> >> -- >> Sven Van Caekenberghe >> Proudly supporting Pharo >> http://pharo.org >> http://association.pharo.org >> http://consortium.pharo.org
