Message-ID:	<351ec431.flying-brick@flying-brick.caverock.net.nz>
From:	Eric Gillespie <viking AT flying-brick DOT caverock DOT net DOT nz>
To:	djgpp Mailing list <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Date:	Mon, 30 Mar 1998 09:59:12 NZT-12DST
Subject:	Re: Pipes and how to seek
Reply-to:	viking AT flying-brick DOT caverock DOT net DOT nz

Stardate  8 Mar 98 14:22, Eli Zaretskii log entry:

:: 
:: On Sat, 7 Mar 1998, Nate Eldredge wrote:
:: 
:: IMHO, you should avoid setting the console to binary mode at all
:: costs, since this have some nasty side-effects (e.g., you cannot
:: interrupt a runaway program with Ctrl-C).  In my experience, it is
:: never really needed anyway: if binary garbage is being sent to the
:: screen, who cares if it gets truncated?
First, thank you for replying to me...
Yeah, I agree, but only in part - I do ACTUALLY want to print the garbage 
heading through stdin, but it turns out the way I've been doing it, the 
stdin can't be set to O_BINARY anyway 8-(, at least not in this situation:

cat strayfile.binary | hexdump

As you probably have figured out, I need the cat program to open stdin in 
O_BINARY, not just hexdump. I am also having problems when using stdin
and then asking for a getch() directly after checking kbhit() - the 
program locks up, though getch will work in other situations while using 
stdin.  I sorted the problem out (temporarily by the following code):

while(!(kbhit())) ;  /* Do nothing until key is hit */
if(fi->FPtr!=stdin) getch();  /* Just dump char */
...

Unfortunately this now means that any character I press to exit the help() 
gets passed through to my main keyprocessing loop when using stdin - heh, 
you should have a look at this monster one day when I've got it 
complete...
=-=-
(Later, much later - seems I'd forgotten to mail this baby...)
I found out I could quite happily substitute getxkey for getch - it means it's
not portable, but then I had never intended it to be (at least not until I 
port this little so and so to Linux or something...)

Another idea I intend to use this for is to take the output from dd or some 
such utility - that way, I could examine the direct output from dd.

I have also thought of something else - it seems what I want to do - using
hexdump on its own without parameters brings up a list of files to choose 
from, may get confused unless I explicitly provide a switch to tell 
hexdump that stdin is connected to the input, i.e. hexdump -s
Otherwise how is hexdump going to tell the difference between nothing (meaning
read stdin) and nothing (display file list to browse)?

Well, I guess I'd better wrap this letter up and get to send it off...
Cheers for now, The Viking.



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