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From: Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Running an editor from ANSI C
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2024 15:42:55 +0100
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On 12/06/2024 13:54, David Brown wrote:
> On 12/06/2024 14:43, Richard Harnden wrote:
>> On 12/06/2024 10:57, Malcolm McLean wrote:
>>>
>>> But yes, my view is the Baby X FileSystem is going to enhance Baby X 
>>> and lift it to a new level. The ability to mount an internal 
>>> filesystem in a small program is very useful indeed.
>>>
>>
>> Why?
>>
>> You have an xml file, which is just a text file, and you want to slurp 
>> that into your babyx - fine, so now you have a large char*.
>>
>> Now you want to 'mount' that.
>> So you can opendir, readdir, ..., fopen something.
>>
>> All just so that you can fgets?
>> Just so you can get a string out of a 'file'.
>> A string you basically had a pointer to already.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but I just cannot see the point.  Seems like you're making 
>> it way more complicated than it needs to be.  I'm not sure why you 
>> think it needs to exist at all.  Or why you think it's a good idea.
>>
>>
> 
> Exactly my thoughts.
> 
> I can appreciate wanting to do this for the fun of it, or the challenge 
> of it.  People have picked weirder things for their hobby projects.
> 
> But I am at a loss to understand why Malcolm thinks this could possibly 
> be /useful/ for anyone.  We've had lots of "you want to be able to do 
> this or that", without the slightest hint as to who "you" might be, or 
> why "you" would want to do anything of the sort.
> 
> And /if/ access to the contents of the xml file as individual files is 
> important and useful, then libfuse would be a vastly more useful and 
> powerful way to handle it.
> 
That is part of the motivation.

Because the shell is an excuse to embed the MiniBasic interpeter, and 
then enhance it. But no one will seriously want to edit FileSystem XML
files using the embedded BabyBasic (forked from MiniBasic) scripts. It's 
just for fun. But it might get the target audience interested in 
interpreters, and they might even buy the book.

Pepole will want the shell to go into FileSystem XML files, list the 
contents, and maybe extract or insert individual files. And so I've now
put in a powerful ls command.

libfuse yes. But as a separate project. It doesn't fit with Baby X.

-- 
Check out my hobby project.
http://malcolmmclean.github.io/babyxrc