2009/11/28 Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice at gmail.com>:
> 2009/11/27 Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda at gmail.com>:
>> An approach I like is to add an endOfStreamValue inst var to Stream and
>> answer its value when at end.  This way nil does not have to be the
>> endOfStreamValue, for example -1 might be much more convenient for a binary
>> stream, and streams can answer nil without confusing their clients.  atEnd
>> can be implemented as
>>     atEnd
>>         ^self peek = self endOfStreamValue
>> You can arrange to make streams raise an end-of-stream exception instead of
>> the endOfStreamValue by using some convention on the contents of
>> endOfStreamValue, such as if it is == to the stream itself (although I note
>> that in the Teleplace image the exception EndOfStrean is defined bit not
>> used).
>>
>> Of course, stream primitives get in the way of adding inst vars to stream
>> classes ;)
>> IMO this is a much more useful scheme than making nil the only endOfStream
>> value.
>>
>
> Last time I proposed to have an inst var endOfStreamAction was here
> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2009-June/009536.html
> .
> Abusing nil value -> nil, I could even let this inst var
> un-initialized and be backward compatible
> (initializing with a ValueHolder on nil would do as well)
>

Nicolas, have you considered introducing methods which allow
graciously handle the end-of-stream while reading?
Something like:

nextIfAtEnd: aBlock
and
next: number ifAtEnd: aBlock


then caller may choose to either write:

char := stream nextIfAtEnd: [nil]

or handle end of stream differently, like leaving the loop:

char := stream nextIfAtEnd: [^ results]

the benefit of such approach that code which reads the stream , don't
needs to additionally
test stream state (atEnd) in iteration between #next sends neither
requires some unique value (like nil) returned by #next
when reaching end of stream.

> Nicolas
>


-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.