Date   : Sat, 27 Mar 1993 17:42:15 +1300
From   : David Sainty <terros@...>
Subject: A new OS layer?

"I Stephenson" <ian@...> says:

>I've been thinking about what I get from my "REAL" computer systems Vs what
>I get from my BBC, and I think that the main problems (aside from lack of
>speed and memory :-)) could be solved by provision of a layer of code
>between user code, and the OS layer.
>
>At its simplest I'm thinking of something that intercepts file
>opens/closes/reads and writes so that screen output can be redirected into a
>file, and keyboard input taken from a file. This is imply implemented by
>trapping all such calls, and then (for example) printing or writing the data
>as appropriate.

But this is already supported through *spool/*exec more or less. Instead of
adding to the OS new calls, at the very most patching onto the old ones will
do the trick.

Perhaps via a *PIPE command, the necessary *spool/*exec commands can be
executed, eg:

*pipe uudecode UUTequila | unzip

Something like this means no special versions of programs are required, and no
special OS modifications need to be initialised before running said programs.
What would need to be done is to build into *pipe information on where various
programs get their input and output from, eg for the above, *pipe should know
that it needs to call uudecode with UUTequila as an input, and a temporary
file as output, and that Unzip requires an input file to be specified (which
is the temporary file...) and will output a number of files.

Oh, well, that was a poor example of how *exec and *spool could be used, but
you get the idea. Is this the sort of thing you are thinking of, or do you
have something far more ambitious in mind?

Dave.