On Mon, 2003-08-18 at 18:13, Hafid wrote:
> Thanks a lot Lars.
>
> It is helpful. Now I would like to ask you, please, what would you do with
> these two senteces and phrase?
>
> /* stat a wrapped stream */
> /* stat a URL */
> struct stat
>
>
>
> The problem is in stat ????
It's fairly common these days in English to use nouns as though they
were verbs (you might say we like to 'verb our nouns'). This is one of
those things which makes sense to us but which can be confusing for
non-native speakers. So the first sentence means 'perform a stat
operation on a wrapped stream', and the second means 'perform a stat
operation on a URL'.
As for the 'struct stat': In C, you can define arbitrary data structure
types using the 'struct' keyword, and then create variables of those
types.
Say you wanted a data structure with personal information. You could do
something like this:
struct person {
char first_name[51];
char last_name[51];
char phone_number[12];
};
...which creates a template for a data structure containing spots to
store a first name, last name, and phone number. Then you could create
a variable using this structure, and store some data into it:
struct person torben;
This creates a variable called 'torben' with the structure I defined
earlier. You can then access the individual parts of this variable by
using torben.first_name, torben.last_name, etc.
In short, it's something like PHP's arrays, but PHP's arrays are much
higher-level (easier to use and less work to figure out). A really good
thing would be find a beginner's book on the C language, since that
would be able to go into far more depth.
As to what a 'stat' actually is: it's just a collection of information
about something, such as a file or a stream. In the C language, you use
a function called 'fstat()' to gather this information; it is returned
to you in a struct. This might contain information on file creation
time, permissions, etc.
> Derick told me [It was just a generally used computer science concept; he
> doubt it can be
> translated at all. (They didn't do it for Dutch for example).]
I agree with Derick; you would likely just confuse people by attempting
to translate concepts like these; they are generally referred to in
English regardless of where you are.
> I just need to know the function of this "creature" if I can say: struct
> stat
It just defines a data structure called 'stat'.
> Regards :)
>
> Hafid
Hope this helps,
Torben
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