Getchar w/wout echo

[steve emmerson]

In article <6589 at haddock.ima.isc.com> karl at haddock.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>Rawenable() and rawdisable() change the state from cooked to raw or 
>from raw to cooked, respectively; if called from the "wrong" state, 
>the behavior is undefined.

I would prefer that rawenable() and rawdisable() be idempotent* rather 
than undefined, unless, of course, this means that they can't be 
implemented on some systems.

I believe this would enable slightly cleaner programs as the relevant
state information would be contained (at least conceptually) in the
raw{en,dis}able()/getrawchar() module -- discharging the programer from
responsibility over the matter.

------------
* "idempotent" means that the effect of calling it twice is the same as 
calling it once, i.e. the second call is a functional no-op.)
-- 
Steve Emmerson                     Inet: steve at umigw.miami.edu [128.116.10.1]
SPAN: miami::emmerson (host 3074::)      emmerson%miami.span at star.stanford.edu
UUCP: ...!ncar!umigw!steve               emmerson%miami.span at vlsi.jpl.nasa.gov
"Computers are like God in the Old Testament: lots of rules and no mercy"