streaming redux

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 30.12.2010 22:59, schrieb Dmitry Olshansky:
> On 28.12.2010 16:08, Daniel Gibson wrote:
> [snip]
>> ## UnbufferedInputTransport:
>>
>> I'd like "void readFully(ubyte[] buffer)" which reads buffer.length
>> bytes or throws an exception if that is not possible
>> This would also fix busy-waiting (it'd block until buffer.length bytes
>> are available).
>>
>> Also "size_t read(void* buffer, size_t length)" (and the same for
>> readFully()) would be nice, so one can read from the stream to buffers
>> of arbitrary type without too much casting. Is probably especially
>> handy when used with (data from) extern(C) functions and such.
>>
>> Also, for convenience: "ubyte[] read(size_t length)" (does something
>> like "return read(new ubyte[length]);"
>> and "ubyte[] readFully(size_t length)"
>
> This, I guess, would be provided by free functions in the same module,
> there is no point in requiring to implement them inside the stream itself.

Maybe for the convenience functions, but what about readFully()?
Could the stream not support a non-blocking read that reads up-to 
buffer.length bytes and a blocking read that blocks until buffer.length 
bytes are read?
If you want to read whole ints, floats, shorts, ... you need something 
like that anyway, because only one byte of an int doesn't help you at 
all. But because the stream may support something like this natively, it 
makes sense to have readFully() here and not in Unformatter.

>>
>> ## UnbufferedOutputTransport:
>>
>> I'd like "void write(void *buffer, size_t length)" - for the same
>> reason as read(void* buffer, size_t length).
>
> Ditto
>

Cheers,
- Daniel