H[y]stery behind the structure name FILE?

[Suman]

I don't seem to recall having seen any other structure defined in the
standard libraries
that has an all uppercase name. FILE, is a glaring exception. Does
anyone know as
to why this is so?

I am not too sure if this is the right place for this question, so I
beg your pardon if I've
wandered off-topic.

Regards,
Suman

 

[Richard Tobin]

I don't seem to recall having seen any other structure defined in the
standard libraries that has an all uppercase name. FILE, is a glaring
exception. Does anyone know as to why this is so?

Historical reasons. It was a macro in the first implementations, see:

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/include/stdio.h.html

Incidentally, FILE is not required to be a struct.

-- Richard

 

[Suman]

Historical reasons. It was a macro in the first implementations, see:

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/include/stdio.h.html

Incidentally, FILE is not required to be a struct.

Of course! That makes sense. I vaguely remember having read this
somewhere.

Thanks a lot for refreshing my memory.

Regards,
Suman

 

[CBFalconer]

I don't seem to recall having seen any other structure defined in the
standard libraries
that has an all uppercase name. FILE, is a glaring exception. Does
anyone know as
to why this is so?

I am not too sure if this is the right place for this question, so I
beg your pardon if I've
wandered off-topic.

Notice the funny line ending sequences in this quote. You can
avoid this if you simply restrict your output lines to be under 72
chars (67 is even better).

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