Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!ncar!tank!oddjob!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Line Buffered output
Message-ID: <13765@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 27 Sep 88 20:55:39 GMT
References: <411@marob.MASA.COM> <178@arnold.UUCP> <3442@crash.cts.com> <1613@ficc.uu.net>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 19

In article <1613@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>It always depresses me when I think that people are still doing line
>buffered output. The problem of handling stdout and stdin is a solved
>problem: do a flushbuf on all interactive streams whenever you do a
>fillbuf on any interactive stream. ...

`Backwards compatibility means we get to keep all our old mistakes.'

I guarantee that if we change this in 4.4BSD, people will complain about
how we broke it.

(I am considering adding a separate macro for putc-without-newline-flush
to the local stdio.h.  This is backward-compatible.  It is also mildly
gross.  Then all we need do is convince the C compiler to migrate `=='
tests across ?: boundaries, if one of the subexpressions turns it into
a degenerate case.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris