[m-rev.] splitting io.m

[Julien Fischer]

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Paul Bone wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 02:34:32PM +1000, Zoltan Somogyi wrote:
>>
>>
>>> - prolog-style see/seen/tell/told [1]
>>> - progname
>>> - command_line_arguments
>>> - exit_status
>>> - globals [1]
>>> - environment variables
>>> - make_temp
>>> - remove file, rename file, symlinks, file access, file type, file modtime
>>> - report_stats [2]
>>> - call_system
>>>
>>> I would have no qualms about deprecating [1] and moving [2].
>>
>> I also would have no objection to moving some of those other groups,
>> e.g. temp files, env vars, call_system, command line, to other
>> modules. They aren't really about input or output, and the new modules
>> containing them would have reasonably high cohesion. However, since
>> these are small pieces of code, the vast majority of io.m would
>> still be left behind.
>>
>
> That's what I thought of doing by moving make_temp and other file
> manipulation together to some other module.  I see Peter's point that dir.m
> is about manipulating paths without doing IO.  However I'd still consider
> that a likely place to put them.
>
> Another group that makes sense to me is:
>
> Environment and process:
>    progname,
>    command_line_arguments,
>    exit_status,
>    environment variables,
>    and maybe call_system.
>
> I'd also support putting call_system in a new submodule with
> fork/exec/waitpid etc, if we provided those.

The latter don't belong in the stdlib IMO as they are OS specific
(and in Mercury's case also backend specific).

Cheers
Julien.