PT 20-Jul-2004

The LOAF protocol is another computer communications protocol. LOAF is characterized by its ease of implementation and the simplicity of its wire protocol. There are implementations is a large number of languages for diverse platforms. See http://postneo.com/postwiki/moin.cgi/LoafHome for additional information and standards track.

Here is a pure-Tcl implementation.

---

 # LOAF.tcl - Copyright (C) 2004 Pat Thoyts <patthoyts@users.sourceforge.net>
 #
 # Pure Tcl implementation of the LOAF protocol
 # See http://postneo.com/postwiki/moin.cgi/LoafHome for further details.
 #
 # -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
 # of this file, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES.
 # -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 #

 namespace eval ::LOAF {
     variable version 0.1.0
     variable rcsid {$Id: 11994,v 1.13 2006-05-25 18:00:10 jcw Exp $}

     namespace export LOAF
 }

 # -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # LOAF::LOAF
 #	The core LOAF protocol function. This drives everything.
 # Returns:
 #	A normal Tcl result.
 #
 proc ::LOAF::LOAF {args} {
     return
 }

 # -------------------------------------------------------------------------

 package provide LOAF $::LOAF::version

 # -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Local variables:
 #   mode: tcl
 #   indent-tabs-mode: nil
 # End:

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NEM: Have you considered submitting this to tcllib?

PT: Absolutely - continuing the practice of adding support for as many protocols as possible to tcllib. However, before this is to happen it will need a test suite and some interoperability testing against implementations in other languages. Especially against implementations on alternative architectures.

I also plan to add some critcl support to provide a speed up to any areas that profile as processing hot-spots.

Stefan Vogel LOAF is so cool. I've written a whitepaper about LOAF. For more information, see [1].

ZLM Stefan, your whitepaper is very clear and succinct. Could you please provide a PDF version for easy printing?

Stefan Vogel Thanks for your interest. A german PDF-version can be downloaded from [2].

US Great stuff! Unfortunately it lacks extensibility. Most of my projects would benefit from LOAF, if I could add some code to it. That's why I implemented ::LOAF::MEAT, The "Management of Extensions to Avoid Trouble". Yes, I admit you have to pay a performance penalty, but it's a fair price for the almost unlimited extensibility you get.

 proc ::LOAF::LOAF {args} {
   catch "::LOAF::MEAT $args"
   return
 }

 proc ::LOAF::MEAT {args} {
   # load all packages you need/want/find
   foreach pkg {list of packages} {
     package require $pkg
   }
   # do your work
   call my_procs
 }

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RS You get more efficient bytecode with the following implementation:

 proc LOAF::LOAF args {}

Ro Why would you care? Since when are we so concerned about efficiency in an HLL? Not the sort of thing my mind should be concerned about.

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