Re: Files and pipes only?

[Hans-Bernhard B. <HBB...@t-...>]

Scott Worley wrote:
> Why are data files required to be regular files or pipes?

Because the source says so. ;-)

> What is the S_ISREG or S_ISFIFO test for, anyway?  It's been in gnuplot 
> since the sourceforge cvs import (rev 1.1, 1999), so there's no commit 
> log there to explain the reason for adding it.

But there's a ChangeLog entry for it, in the "old" logfile:

1998-09-16  Lars Hecking  <lhe...@nm...>

         * datafile.c: Modified version of Alexander Mai's stat(2) patch
         (check if regular file or pipe before opening data file).

Good luck trying to find Alexander and getting him to remember what his 
rationale for that patch was, over nine years ago.

> Also, the test is simply skipped ifndef HAVE_SYS_STAT_H.

Of course it is --- without that header, we can't use stat(), so there 
would be no way to do the test.