Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> ...
> 
> OK, now what shall we do?  Choose one (or propose anything else).
> 
>  (a) no modify, no method addition (actually removing my modify).
>  (b) add IO::read without 'offset'
>  (c) add IO::read with 'offset'. no modify for IO#read (the latest CVS).
>  (d) something else.
> 
> I vote for (c).  Thanks in advance for your vote.
> 

(c) looks fine.

Meanwhile, (looking at d), I am working on some code where it would
be nice to able to do a few additional things with a regular file,
having to do with lines...

1) be able to pop off the last line of a file (and have it deleted)
2) for that matter, push, shift and unshift a line at a time
3) as a matter of fact, what about treating the file as an array of lines,
without ever having to populate an in-memory array? That would include
using the convenient index, range, and regex accessor features.
4) finally, being able to specify this for unix-, pc-, and mac-style newlines.

Wouldn't this be neat? Does this appeal to anyone else?

What this would imply, I think, is being able to determine the offsets
of the newlines in the file...


Guy N. Hurst

-- 
HurstLinks Web Development    http://www.hurstlinks.com/
Norfolk, VA  23510            (757)623-9688 FAX 623-0433
PHP/MySQL - Ruby/Perl - HTML/Javascript