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Signature BIN_IO (basis)

Operations for binary IO.

The structure BinIO provides input/output of binary data (8-bit bytes). The semantics of the various I/O operations can be found in the description of the IMPERATIVE_IO signature. The openIn and openOut functions allow the creation of binary streams to read and write file data. Certain implementations may provide other ways to open files in structures specific to an operating system. 
structure BinIO : BIN_IO (basis)

signature BIN_IO =
  sig
    include IMPERATIVE_IO
      where type StreamIO.vector = Word8Vector.vector
      where type StreamIO.elem = Word8.word
      where type StreamIO.reader = BinPrimIO.reader
      where type StreamIO.writer = BinPrimIO.writer
      where type StreamIO.pos = BinPrimIO.pos
    val openIn  : string -> instream
    val openOut : string -> outstream
    val openAppend : string -> outstream
  end
[openIn name]
[openOut name]
These functions open the file named name for input and output, respectively. If name is a relative pathname, the file opened depends on the current working directory. With openOut, the file is created if it does not already exist and truncated to length zero otherwise. These raise Io if a stream cannot be opened on the given file or, in the case of openIn, the file name does not exist.

[openAppend name]
opens the file named name for output in append mode, creating it if it does not already exist. If the file already exists, it sets the current position at the end of the file. It raises Io if a stream cannot be opened on the given file. Beyond having the initial file position at the end of the file, any additional properties are system and implementation dependent. On operating systems (e.g., Unix) that support ``atomic append mode,'' each (flushed) output operation to the file will be appended to the end, even if there are other processes writing to the file simultaneously. Due to buffering, however, writing on an outstream need not be atomic, i.e., output from a different process may interleave the output of a single write using the stream library. On certain other operating systems, having the file open for writing prevents any other process from opening the file for writing.

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