Subj : Re: Do all programming languages use files? To : comp.programming From : mwojcik Date : Mon Aug 29 2005 10:34 pm In article <1125311420.471389.249420@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "Past" writes: > I was doing a research to see if all the programming languages ever > written have atleast some small level capability of successfully > writing and reading from files? No. Few assembly languages, for example, include file I/O operations, since few CPUs provide file I/O operations. Of course, assembly programs for systems with filesystems (a minority of all computers in use today, but it's a highly-visible minority) are able to perform file I/O, but not through any facility inherent in the language itself; they have to invoke system-specific mechanisms. There are many experimental, toy, and esoteric languages which do not have file I/O capabilities. The Unlambda and ETA languages do not have them, for example. Web sites like "The Turing Tarpit" will provide you with many examples of these.[1] For that matter, the C language does not have any capability for "successfully writing and reading from files". The C standard requires that hosted implementations provide a series of functions for file I/O, but these are permitted to fail for any reason whatsoever, including being written by the implementor to always fail. *Successful* file I/O is a quality-of-implementation and environmental issue as far as C is concerned. Some languages are loaded with features, including things like file I/O, as part of the standard package; others go for a more minimal approach. And different languages that do provide for file I/O approach it in some very different ways. You might want to compare, for example, the file I/O support in Pascal (intended to be easy for students), C (intended to be flexible), and COBOL (intended to facilitate implementing business rules). 1. http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Station/2266/tarpit/tarpit.html -- Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@microfocus.com Maybe, but it can't compete with _SNA Formats_ for intricate plot twists. "This format is used only when byte 5, bit 1 is set to 1 (i.e., when generalized PIU trace data is included)" - brilliant! .