Another silly primitive question
Lex Spoon
lex at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Feb 16 22:33:20 UTC 1999
agree at carltonfields.com wrote:
> Lex writes:
>
> >On the other hand, there are primitives intended for low-level OS
access
> that Squeak doesn't understand. For instance, adding pipes or Unix
> domain sockets. These kind of primitives tend to be pretty short, and
> furthermore they aren't able to run under in Smalltalk. For these,
it's
> probably *easier* to just write the C code directly. The primitives
are
> unlikely to actually run in Smalltalk, anyway, so you have the same
> edit-compile-restart cycle.
>
> The downside of this, of course, is that such primitives must then be
linked
> directly into the Smalltalk VM, numbers must be assigned, and so
forth. Using
> named primitives compiled into shared libraries (DLL's, etc.), you can
write
> plugins that require no "hard-wiring" apart from the smalltalk glue
you write,
> making it possible to build modular facilities that can be easily used
by
> anyone, even if they do not own a C compiler.
>
Well, you *can* write pluggable primitives straight in C--I've in fact
been doing so a little. But maybe this is a deprecated way to do
things?
Lex
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