Re: pspp development

[Ben Pfaff]

John Darrington <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, Dec 29, 2004 at 12:27:32AM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
>
>   I understand that sourceforge supports subversion now.  I wonder
>   whether savannah has any plans to support additional SCM systems?
>   CVS can be pretty limiting.
>
> I think savannah does have such plans.  Maybe we should wait until
> they are implemented.

Perhaps we should ask what kind of time frame to expect.  If it's
going to be a few months, that's probably fine.  If it's going to
be a few years, we probably want to reorganize before then.  In
between, who knows?

>      John Darrington <address@hidden> writes:
>      
>      > 1. Perhaps subclist.[ch] should be tidied up a bit, (renamed) and put 
> in
>      >    the same directory as hash.[ch]  I had originally intended these 
> only
>      >    to be used to contain parameters of subcommands, but I'm frequently
>      >    coming up with the situation where I want a general purpose linked
>      >    list. 
>      
>      Do you mean a real linked list or the kind of dynamic vector that
>      subclist currently implements?  The properties are quite
>      different.  I have an actual linked list ADT in the works but
>      it's not ready yet.  If you'd like a dynamic vector, sounds fine
>      to me.
>
> Actually I'd forgotten how I implemented it.   The properties are
> indeed different, but the differences only become significant when 
> there are are lots of elements.   In it's current use, there's never
> going to be a subclist which contains lots of elements.  But you're
> right I should have thought about it more carefully.  If you're
> cooking up a linked list, then I'll wait until it's ready.

Well, dynamic vectors are useful in their own right.  I would
have no objection to having a general-purpose implementation in
our library (as long as it's not called a list).

So far I've only played around with a linked list idea.  I've
attached the header file I'm working on for PSPP.  I've also
attached the header and implementation that I've been using as an
inspiration, which are taken from my "Pintos" instructional
operating system that we're using here at Stanford to teach our
basic OS course, CS 140.

list.h
Description: working header file

list.h
Description: Pintos list header

list.c
Description: Pintos list implementation

>      > 3. It might be a mistake to try to class things with too fine
>      >    grain. For example, I'm not sure what the distinction between a
>      >    "procedure" and a "utility".  There might be grey areas.
>      
>      A procedure processes the active file, a utility does not.
>
> When you say "processes", should I infer "modifies"?  Nearly all of
> the commands depend upon the active file in some way.

They read and process the data in the active file, typically
using a function like "procedure()".
-- 
Ben Pfaff 
email: address@hidden
web: http://benpfaff.org