Streams: an open discussion

[Ben Hinkle]

<surferjeff at excite.com> wrote in message 
news:dtribg$eui$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
> The interface for InputStream and OutputStream is huge.  I often have to 
> create
> my own streambufs in C++, which only requires implementing about 5 
> methods.  If
> I want to write my own class that implements InputStream, then I have to
> implement about 50 methods, and another 50 if I want to implement 
> OutputStream
> too!
>
> It would useful if there were smaller interfaces.  For example, a read() 
> method
> and eof() for input, and that's it.  Then have a util class that takes one 
> of
> these small interfaces and implements the full 50 methods in the bigger
> interface.
>
> Yes, I could do this in my own code, but I think many people will have to
> re-invent this wheel in D, and each re-invention will be different and not
> interchangeable.


Subclass Stream or FilterStream. You'll probably have to override 3 methods: 
readBlock, writeBlock and seek. The interfaces are primarily for users to 
restrict their API - not for library writers to shoe-horn their classes 
into. Look at any of the small stream classes in std.stream to get an idea 
how easy it is to do.