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From: Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2024 18:25:54 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2024-04-01, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com <Muttley@dastardlyhq.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 06:49:48 -0300
> Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote:
>>Muttley@dastardlyhq.com writes:
>>
>>> On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 18:46:50 -0000 (UTC)
>>> Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> wrote:
>>>>(defun get-network-interface-list ()
>>>>  (open-shared-library "iphlpapi.dll")
>>>>  (let ((blk-size 65536) ;; crude!
>>>>        (get-adapters-info (foreign-symbol-address "GetAdaptersInfo")))
>>>>      (if get-adapters-info
>>>>        (%stack-block ((blk blk-size))
>>>>          (rlet ((len-inout #>ULONG blk-size))
>>>>            (if (zerop (ff-call get-adapters-info :address blk
>>>>                                                  :address len-inout
>>>>                                                  #>DWORD))
>>>>              (loop for ptr = blk then (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Next)
>>>>                    until (%null-ptr-p ptr)
>>>>                    collecting
>>>>                      (let ((alen (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.AddressLength))
>>
>>>>                            (addr (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Address))
>>>>                            (aname (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.AdapterName))
>>>>                            (descr (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Description))
>>>>                            (iplist (pref ptr
>>#>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.IpAddressList))
>>>>
>>>>                            (type (pref ptr #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.Type)))
>>>>                        (list type
>>>>                              (loop for i below alen
>>>>                                    collecting (%get-unsigned-byte addr i)
>>>>                                      into mac-bytes
>>>>                                    finally
>>>>                                      (return (mac-bytes-to-string
>>mac-bytes)))
>>>>
>>>>                              (get-ip-address-list iplist)
>>>>                              (%get-cstring aname)
>>>>                              (%get-cstring descr))))))))))
>>>
>>> Ugh. No wonder the language fell out of fashion. Looks like some kind of 
>>> hacked up Basic.
>>
>>Fashion and intelligence have never been very good friends.
>
> Readability of the flow of control matters. God knows whats going on with
> all those nested statements.

I didn't spend a lot of time on that code in the first place, and have
not looked it in over ten years; yet it's trivially easily readable to me.

Anyway, it's in a high level language, yet following a linked list of
structs obtained from a Win32 function, which  the code fetches into
a buffer allocated efficiently on the native stack.

The whole thing is compiled into native code.

CCL's primitives for accessing the C stuff aren't pretty, but they are
helpful. It's nice that it has the parsed information about the struct
offsets, like #>IP_ADAPTER_INFO.AdapterName.  I didn't have to define
that anywhere. I remember it was pretty easy to  figure the primtiies
out from CCL's reference documentation. Easy to write, easy to read
a decade later.

-- 
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
Mastodon: @Kazinator@mstdn.ca