write-octets

Arguments: stream buffer start end blocking

This function starts by blocking until any unwritten contents of the argument stream's output buffer are written out. Then it writes as many octets as possible from the buffer specified by the buffer argument to stream's output handle. The output handle is examined, and if it is a stream (i.e. encapsulated), then that output handle is written to in a manner similar to write-vector, except that no further checking of arguments is done; it is assumed that the caller has done whatever checking that is necessary. Otherwise, if the handle is an operating-system-defined handle, the system write function is called.

buffer is any specialized simple-array of one dimension (it will be treated as if it were a simple vector of octets). Buffer can also be a fixnum, in which case it is treated as an aligned pointer and the "vector" is the memory implied by the aligned pointer. (See Aligned pointers in ftype.htm.)

The blocking controls what happens if not even one octet can be written. If it is true, the function will block if the first character cannot be written; if it is nil, the function does not block. See Blocking behavior in simple-streams in streams.htm.

Return values:

• A number greater than or equal to 0: the number of bytes actually written. 0 bytes are only ever transferred when blocking is nil.
• -3: Special return value for a no-hang query. If the start and end arguments are eql and if blocking is nil, then a 0 return means no data can be written, and a -3 value means data could have been written.
• (- -10 errno): the value of the error return from the system operation. For example, -19 represents an errno value of 9, which is EBADF (bad file number) on most systems.

This function is intended for implementing device-level functionality and should not be used except for that purpose. See Simple-stream Description in streams.htm for a description of the device-level.

See streams.htm for information on the simple-streams implementation in Allegro CL.

Copyright (c) 1998-2016, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
This page was not revised from the 8.1 page.
Created 2010.1.21.