Monday, July 9, 2018

Finally refreshed the terminal screen

It was always a big question in me that all schooling/engineering  programming  courses( C or assembly)  teach Fibonacci series or some tough logic program ( something like for a given number 'N' search the subset bla bla .. ) . But when I looked at the computer , I wondered how they build these screens/commands and applications.. is it with Maths ?  is it with Fibonacci series /prime numbers? (They are not, it made up of simple logics.. but its like a 'building blocks' game)

My expectation from computer classes was  to build some screens or applications ,  ( but generally I got bored with theory . there was my fault too , i admit ) . Computer applications/commands  did not look like mathematical problem ,But computer subjects seems to me as  mathematics subject. ( I know they really need maths, when we deep dive).

But as a beginner, I misunderstood that someone who knows deep maths can only do something with computer .. but actually that is not the case.

Whatever programs I studied/taught to  do something with stdin ( standard input) or stdout( standard /the screen), are something like 'reverse string' or 'search character', but they did not generate any motivation to build some real world applications, rather I got scared even to attempt/read big programs, thinking it might require big logical algorithms that my brain can't digest.  but as student I always wanted to build something like 'vi' (editor) or some commands or something having windows (not Microsoft windows) screen. At least I wanted to know how these functionalities are coming in the screen.
When I build some functionality that actual 'vi' editor has , I feels like I am writing programs as a professional (Really its not the case)

Having said all these story :-)  as a hobby project , I am  trying to build an editor based on the documentation https://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/03.rawInputAndOutput.html

I am learning lot of things when I wanted my program to do some functionality that 'vi' editor does.

More over I am trying to build this in Rust language  which is a new generation  computer programming language , capable of replacing 'C' language. Every system programmers should try to learn it as per http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs140e/

:-)


My text editor draft , just refreshed the screen :-)
https://github.com/davnav/RustEditor



The clear screen functionality can be easily built with below code, but it was never known to me ( as I know only Fibonacci ... :-) )

// Refresh the screen by writing "x1b[2J" byte to screen
io::stdout().write(b"\x1b[2J");
println!();

// align the cursor to the left top by writing  "\x1b[H" byte to screen
io::stdout().write(b"\x1b[H");



but be aware , Rust compiler is ruthless :-) . it makes us read the documentation thoroughly.










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