Reading From Handles

There are some simple functions for reading from handles (any kind of input handle, file, string etc.):

  • read-char reads one Unicode code point from the handle

  • read-line reads one normal line (newline/ASCII LF terminated) from the handle. The result does not include the newline.

  • read-lines reads all remaining lines from the handle. The result includes all the newlines.

All of these functions can provoke an End of File state for the handle (including string handles!). That will return the end of file value whose printed form is #<eof>.

You can test for the end of file value with the eof? predicate and/or you can test the handle to see if End of File has been reached with eof-handle?.

Idio maintains some positional attributes when reading from a handle: the current line accessed with handle-line, starting from 1 (one); and the current position accessed with handle-pos, starting from 0 (zero).

You can rewind a handle with rewind-handle or jump to any position with seek-handle. If you seek to anywhere other than position 0 then the line number status is lost.

Warning

Seeking in files containing (non-single byte) Unicode code points is extremely dangerous as files are indexed by byte and therefore you are at risk of landing in the middle of a encoding sequence.

Seeking in strings is OK as strings are indexed by code points.

reading-handles.idio
ifh := open-input-file "/tmp/words.txt"

printf "c@1 is %s\n" (read-char ifh)
printf "c@2 is %s\n" (read-char ifh)
printf "c*  is %s\n" (read-line ifh)

printf "currently: line %s: pos %s\n" (handle-line ifh) (handle-pos ifh)

;; a handy condensed form of the handle's details
printf "ifh is %s\n" ifh

;; position 4 is just before the fifth byte
seek-handle ifh 4

printf "c@4 is %s\n" (read-char ifh)

;; The example file has a trailing newline so we'll seek one position
;; before that
seek-handle ifh -2 'end

printf "e-2 is %s\n" (read-char ifh)

;; don't forget!
close-handle ifh

$ echo -e "hello\nworld" > /tmp/words.txt

$ idio reading-handles
c@1 is h
c@2 is e
c*  is llo
currently: line 2: pos 6
ifh is #<H ofre   4:"/tmp/words.txt":2:6>
c@4 is o
e-2 is d

Last built at 2024-05-21T06:11:41Z+0000 from 77077af (dev) for Idio 0.3