Subject: Re: closing files by gc
From: Erik Naggum <erik@erik.naggum.no>
Date: 09 Jan 2003 10:01:39 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3251095299409304@erik.naggum.no>

* Tom Lord
| In other words: it isn't just a "safety net" to compensate for
| sloppy programming (like `with-foo' implementations that aren't
| quite right).  In fact, for some algorithms, it's essential.
| 
| All the people advising "Hey, just use `with-foo'" -- well, as a
| rule of thumb, that's fine.  But as an absolute rule it means "Hey,
| there are some algorithms you can't code in lisp" and that's just
| icky.
| 
| Geeze, isn't this completely obvious?  Y'all are writing satire,
| right?

  What I find rather obvious is that any stream you read from may be
  closed when you hit end-of-file, regardless of where this happens.
  Users of a stream can test for open-ness with `open-stream-p´,
  which is quite remarkably different from testing for end-of-file.

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.