Using C Dynamic Libraries In Go Programs | Hacker News Reader

Using C Dynamic Libraries In Go Programs

goinggo.net

34 pointsgonzo_ed11 comments

Coming from a C background, I was pretty disgusted with the "hack" of adding the include files in a comment before 'import C'. But then, even though they look similar, Go doesn't treat comments like C does, where they're eliminated by the C preprocessor and completely invisible to the source.

This is because cgo is actually a preprocessor that generates the final C and Go code that is built. The tools are just good at hiding this. Personally, I wouldn't say this is a bad thing. You can do some powerful things with this, including using your own .c and .h files in your Go packages. For a while, the YAML package at launchpad.net/goyaml did this by using libyaml code directly instead of having to link to external libraries, though now it is pure Go.

You use C! You have no right to complain about ugly hacks! (jk)

I wonder why the author didn't just read() in bytes from STDIN_FILENO? No need to use stuff like fget*.

I think by default your terminal is in "cooked" mode, where stdin is buffered a line at a time. Try

  cat /dev/fd/0

then type some things including backspace and enter.

However, you don't need ncurses to change this behavior. termios is the lower-level C API. You can do it from Go with the syscall APIs but I suspect it might be frustrating to make portable. https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/ssh/terminal/util...

Yep, it's a bit gnarly. But at least linux/MacOS is straightforward: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/yRkGpw624-I/htJt...

There's a package that does that: https://github.com/nsf/termbox-go

Ah you're right, I was thinking TTY didn't buffer at all but it does line buffering. That is contrasted to regular buffering if it wasn't a TTY.

Neither fget*() or read() from stdin would work because stdin is buffered.

It's possible to change the mode, but it would require calling the terminal control functions, and that'd requiring calling out to C anyway, so might as well use ncurses.

Nope, you don't have to touch C at all. The syscall package has all you need. But it's still a lot of lowlevel coding. Ncurses is probably easier.

Another option for this particular example would have been to use pre-existing ncurses bindings, e.g., https://github.com/tncardoso/gocurses which somewhat simplifies things.

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