From: Charles D Hixson <charleshixsn@...>
Date: 2001-09-23T03:48:59+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:21559] Re: Reassigning and reopening $stdin

On Saturday 22 September 2001 11:22 am, you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In message "[ruby-talk:21553] Reassigning and reopening $stdin"
>
>     on 01/09/23, Brian Marick <marick@testing.com> writes:
> |I know that $stdin.reopen("alternate-in") will work, but I
> | cannot find a way to put $stdin back to its original value. So
> | I don't see how you can temporarily redirect $stdin. Perhaps
> | the answer is just "you shouldn't ever want to", which actually
> | would be OK with me.
>
> You've find the hole.  Sigh.  That is a behavior that I couldn't
> define properly.  So $stdin assignment is not a final behavior.
> If you have an opinion for what-it-should-be, I'm open.
>
> 							matz.
Perhaps stdin, stdout, and stderr are important enough to have 
non-redefinable copies stored somewhere.  This doesn't handle the 
problem of what to do about data that's in the buffer but hasn't 
been processed, but it makes it always possible to get back to 
where you can send and receive over the standard channels.
A good choice for the names of these special copies seems to me to 
be:
$STD_IN_  $STD_OUT_  $STD_ERR_
since they are global, constant, and special (i.e., they have no 
methods which allow them to set their values after creation [at 
program startup time])
-- 
 Charles Hixson
 
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