Re: naming data sets

[John Darrington]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 11:13:00PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
     
     > Here's what I'd add to the PSPP language:
     >
     >         * Some extra syntax on FILE HANDLE for declaring
     >           temporary file handles (MODE=TEMPORARY perhaps).
     
     I dropped this.  There is no need to declare a temporary file
     handle in advance.  Instead, any file handle with a name that
     begins with $ is a temporary file handle.


That makes sense iff the current spss language prohibits file handles
which begin with $ --- I don't know if that is the case.
     
     The main mechanism I'm introducing for programmatically dealing
     with temporary file handles is "any-writer" and "any-reader".
     You pass either one of these objects a file handle and it figures
     out what kind of thing it is and handles it appropriately.  If
     you pass it a temporary file handle, it'll deal with it in
     memory.  If you pass it a file name, then (for reading) it'll
     open up the file and figure out whether it's a portable file or a
     system file and read it properly either way or (for writing)
     it'll look at the file name extension and decide whether to write
     a system file or a portable file.  The programmatic interface is
     the same regardless of the underlying storage.
     

Sounds ok.  It might even solve some of the problems I'm currently
having with the gui's use of file handles.

J'


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