.file ¶The .file command opens a new IO space backed by a file, or
switches to a previously opened file. When reading or writing the file is
accessed via the read and write syscalls. An alternative using the mmap syscall
is implemented as .mmap command. See .file
The syntax is:
.file path
where path is a path to a file to open, which can be relative to poke’s current working directory or absolute.
Tilde expansion is performed in path, much like it’s done in the
shell. This means you can include special characters like ~
(which will expand to your home directory) delimit the file name with
" in case it includes leading or trailing blank characters,
etc.
When a new file is opened it becomes the current IO space. From that point on, every map executed in the REPL or while loading a Poke program will operate on that IO space:
(poke) .file foo.o The current file is now `foo.o'.
When .file opens a file, it is opened in whatever mode makes
more sense: if the file allows to be written and read then the IO
space is open in read/write mode, for example.
If the specified file path doesn’t exist then poke emits an error.
However, the flag /c ( for “create”) can be passed to the
command to tell poke it should create a new file.
A file can be opened in read-only mode by specifying the flag
/r.