Re: Manipulating C code at the AST level, in C

On 8/14/26 07:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
> (Given I'm commenting on the content of the online manual on a Linux
> system, I'm adding and followingup-to comp.os.linux.misc.)
> 
> On 2026-08-11, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:41:30 -0300, Anton Antimo wrote:
>>
>>> For select (called unix-fast-select in SBCL), see sb-unix.
>>
>> select(2) is considered an archaic way of doing things these days,
>> because of its ABI limitations. The modern way is poll()
>> <https://manpages.debian.org/poll(2)> (POSIX) or even epoll()
>> <https://manpages.debian.org/epoll(7)> (Linux-specific).
> 
> The online manual here (a GNU/Linux system) says:
> 
>      "poll, ppoll - wait for some event on a file descriptor"
> 
> Perhaps that should be rewritten. Reading further, it's not singular,
> but that description with "*A* file descriptor" does make it sound like
> poll is not a suitable replacement for select.


   Polling, for this sort of thing, has to be
   fast and constant - a big CPU drag. You are
   basically WAITING for something to happen -
   which MAY or may NOT happen at any moment.

   The writers of various utils and basic system
   functions NEED to include some kind of easy
   flag or interrupt routine that other utils can
   monitor at VERY LOW CPU/Time investment.

   Coding such 'trigger indicators' is NOT difficult.