Re: request for review: Doing direct file I/O in Emacs Lisp

[Kai Grossjohann]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     Both.  Like any shell, eshell provides builtins and it is able to
>     invoke subprocesses.  For example, you can type "find-file foo" as a
>     command to eshell, and eshell will then invoke the builtin find-file.
>
> When eshell sees a redirect from a builtin, I think it would be most
> efficient to produce the output in a buffer and write it with
> write-region into the file.

What about "ls foo | grep bla"?  Then the output isn't a file.

> When it is a matter of a subprocess, what could be useful is a feature
> for start-process to specify files for additional descriptors.
> That would be a completely different feature.

That would be an interesting feature.  But I think there is also the
need to send output from a process to a Lisp command, and to send
output from a Lisp command to a process.  This way, one can do:

    shell_command | lisp_builtin | shell_command_2

WDYT?

But talk is cheap...
Kai