RE: [Caml-list] closing file descriptors and channels

["Christian Schaller" <Christian.Schaller@siemens.com>]

> close_out and close_in both perform the equivalent of a Unix.close on
> the underlying Unix file descriptor, and, yes, closing something that
> is already closed is an I/O exception.  So, one possibility is to
> close only one of the three entities file_descr, oc and ic.  It's best
> to close the output channel oc, since this will flush its buffer.

What I did was just skipping the Unix.close, but close *both* in- and
out-channels and it worked (until now ;-) ).

> Side remark: you'd need to close the file descriptor also in the case
> where the line is found and the exception Found is raised.

Yup, I've seen this one already.  This one makes it complicated, since
for propagating the exception, I have to duplicate the closings:

    .
    .
    .
  with          
  End_of_file -> output_string oc (line ^ "\n");
  Found line -> (close_out oc; close_in ic; raise Found line);
  close_out oc;
  close_in ic

Since I am new to streams & co, are there any kind of rules when to
prefer streams to normal I/O?  Is there more overhead when using
streams?  Shouldn't I use streams when working on a regular text file?

What if I want to break from a stream with an exception (as above the
Found exception)?  Closing/accessing the channel is only possible in the
stream creation as in my corrected version:

let read_lines ch =
  let read_new_line n =
    try Some (input_line ch)
    with End_of_file -> close_in ch; None in
  Stream.from read_new_line

Now I want to stop reading lines after a certain number of lines

let rec read_n_lines n =
  parser
  [< 'line; rest >] -> if n <> 0 then print_endline line; read_n_lines
(n-1) else ()
  [< >] -> ()

Didn't type-check it, though ;-)  Anyway, how can I close the stream in
this case?

Thanks!

- Chris

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