Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!jimomura
From: jimomura@lsuc.uucp (Jim Omura)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m6809
Subject: Re: I keep getting a device error
Summary: ASCII v. Binary
Keywords: OS9 COCO
Message-ID: <1988Jul17.131646.3739@lsuc.uucp>
Date: 17 Jul 88 17:16:43 GMT
References: <674@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura)
Distribution: na
Organization: Consultant, Toronto
Lines: 47

In article <674@cbnews.ATT.COM> mdk@cbnews.ATT.COM (Shadow) writes:

>Recently I tried to write a little basic09 program to spool print a letter
>I was writing to my family.  It was a pretty simple program,  I passed it the
>path to the file, and the number of copies I wanted printed and it would print
>that number of copies.  However, it ran through the first iteration and
>returned a device
>not ready error.  I used a for loop to count the number of iterations and the 
>shell command to list the file to the printer.  My question is this, can 
>I use the close statement after printing the file without using an open
>statement before I run the shell command.  Should I do something like:
>
>for i = 1 to count
>shell ("list " file ">" #printer)
>close #printer
>i=i + 1
>next i

     The problem here is that you have tried to mix ASCII and binary
data.  The '#printer' is binary.  The best thing to do is to build
a character string properly in separate statements and then use it
in the shell() call.  Something like this:

cmd$ = "list " + file + " >/p"
shell(cmds$)

     That's off the top of my head, so there may be a mistake
in there, but I doubt it.

>In another area, I just got done taking a class in the UNIX(r) system shell.
>(the Bourne shell).  It is pretty amazing what you can do with a shell that
>is also a programming language.  I hope I can put some of this to use in
>Basic09.  It's too bad we don't have something like that for OS9.

     Well, yeah, but BASIC09 can make up for a lot of it.  But
like other areas of OS-9 6809, the thing I find disconcerting is
that as good as it is, it could stand improving, and Microware
seems to have become complacent about fixing bugs and such.
Frankly, I haven't used BASIC09 in a long time, having been
using C almost exclusively lately, but in the back of my mind
I vaguely remember finding a bug or two.


-- 
Jim Omura, 2A King George's Drive, Toronto, (416) 652-3880
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