10.7 Modules for Interfacing with the File System

lstream.c
lstream.h

These modules implement the stream Lisp object type. This is an internal-only Lisp object that implements a generic buffering stream. The idea is to provide a uniform interface onto all sources and sinks of data, including file descriptors, stdio streams, chunks of memory, Lisp buffers, Lisp strings, etc. That way, I/O functions can be written to the stream interface and can transparently handle all possible sources and sinks. (For example, the read function can read data from a file, a string, a buffer, or even a function that is called repeatedly to return data, without worrying about where the data is coming from or what-size chunks it is returned in.)

Note that in the C code, streams are called lstreams (for “Lisp streams”) to distinguish them from other kinds of streams, e.g. stdio streams and C++ I/O streams.

Similar to other subsystems in SXEmacs, lstreams are separated into generic functions and a set of methods for the different types of lstreams. lstream.c provides implementations of many different types of streams; others are provided, e.g., in file-coding.c.

fileio.c

This implements the basic primitives for interfacing with the file system. This includes primitives for reading files into buffers, writing buffers into files, checking for the presence or accessibility of files, canonicalizing file names, etc. Note that these primitives are usually not invoked directly by the user: There is a great deal of higher-level Lisp code that implements the user commands such as find-file and save-buffer. This is similar to the distinction between the lower-level primitives in editfns.c and the higher-level user commands in commands.c and simple.el.

filelock.c

This file provides functions for detecting clashes between different processes (e.g. SXEmacs and some external process, or two different SXEmacs processes) modifying the same file. (SXEmacs can optionally use the lock/ subdirectory to provide a form of “locking” between different SXEmacs processes.) This module is also used by the low-level functions in insdel.c to ensure that, if the first modification is being made to a buffer whose corresponding file has been externally modified, the user is made aware of this so that the buffer can be synched up with the external changes if necessary.

filemode.c

This file provides some miscellaneous functions that construct a ‘rwxr-xr-x’-type permissions string (as might appear in an ls-style directory listing) given the information returned by the stat() system call.

dired.c
ndir.h

These files implement the SXEmacs interface to directory searching. This includes a number of primitives for determining the files in a directory and for doing filename completion. (Remember that generic completion is handled by a different mechanism, in minibuf.c.)

ndir.h is a header file used for the directory-searching emulation functions provided in sysdep.c (see section J below), for systems that don’t provide any directory-searching functions. (On those systems, directories can be read directly as files, and parsed.)

realpath.c

This file provides an implementation of the realpath() function for expanding symbolic links, on systems that don’t implement it or have a broken implementation.