6.7 File Descriptor Streams

Many of the UNIX system calls return file descriptors. Instead of using other UNIX system calls to perform I/O on them, you can create a stream around them. For this purpose, fd-streams exist. See also  read-n-bytes (page ).

[Function]
system:make-fd-stream descriptor &key :input :output :element-type :buffering :name :file :original :delete-original :auto-close :timeout :pathname

This function creates a file descriptor stream using descriptor. If :input is non-nil, input operations are allowed. If :output is non-nil, output operations are allowed. The default is input only. These keywords are defined:

:element-type

is the type of the unit of transaction for the stream, which defaults to string-char. See the Common Lisp description of open for valid values.

:buffering

is the kind of output buffering desired for the stream. Legal values are :none for no buffering, :line for buffering up to each newline, and :full for full buffering.

:name

is a simple-string name to use for descriptive purposes when the system prints an fd-stream. When printing fd-streams, the system prepends the streams name with Stream for . If name is unspecified, it defaults to a string containing file or descriptor, in order of preference.

:file, :original

file specifies the defaulted namestring of the associated file when creating a file stream (must be a simple-string). original is the simple-string name of a backup file containing the original contents of file while writing file.

When you abort the stream by passing t to close as the second argument, if you supplied both file and original, close will rename the original name to the file name. When you close the stream normally, if you supplied original, and delete-original is non-nil, close deletes original. If auto-close is true (the default), then descriptor will be closed when the stream is garbage collected.

:pathname

: The original pathname passed to open and returned by pathname; not defaulted or translated.

:timeout

if non-null, then timeout is an integer number of seconds after which an input wait should time out. If a read does time out, then the system:io-timeout condition is signalled.

[Function]
system:fd-stream-p object

This function returns t if object is an fd-stream, and nil if not. Obsolete: use the portable (typep x 'file-stream).

[Function]
system:fd-stream-fd stream

This returns the file descriptor associated with stream.