file i/o in a variety of languages

[dsimcha]

== Quote from Steven Schveighoffer (schveiguy at yahoo.com)'s article
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:41:58 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> > On 8/27/10 13:28 PDT, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> >> No, the code does this:
> >>
> >> f.writeln("hello");
> >> f.writeln("world");
> >>
> >> The example is supposed to demonstrate how to re-open the file for
> >> appending and write "world". Look at some of the other examples. Not
> >> that it's a big deal, because I think it's just one more line.
> >
> > Oh, I understand now. Thanks.
> BTW, Don pointed out the clarifcation that I missed.  It actually is
> correct, my apologies.
> >> I bring it up because people look at the C++ or C version and say "how
> >> ugly, look how nice D looks," but the C++ version doesn't incur extra
> >> allocations AFAIK. It's like commenting on how beautiful function qsort
> >> looks. In reality, it's not as bad, because it's just that the
> >> functionality isn't there yet. If it were, it would still look as
> >> beautiful :) I just hate it when people compares an apple to orange and
> >> comment on how the orange looks like a much better apple.
> >
> > I agree. In fairness, the same goes about comparing incorrect code with
> > correct code. My understanding is that quite a few examples given in
> > that thread are not correct, in spite of looking quite elaborate.
> >
> > FWIW it's not much aggravation to avoid unnecessary allocations:
> >
> > char[] line;
> > f.readln(line);
> > f.readln(line);
> Hm.. this still allocates.  We can do better than the C++ example:
> char[128] buf;
> char[] line = buf[];
> f.readln(line);
> f.readln(line);
> Which should not allocate at all in this case, and is completely safe if
> it *does* have to allocate (like if some malicious code came along and
> rewrote the file to have a 500-character first line).  Try to do *that*
> with std::string :)
> Man D is just so cool!
> -Steve

I actually have no idea whether this reallocates or not because of the way the
scarily complex readlnImpl() code works in std.stdio, and I think I was the last
person to modify that code.