8 bit os_f handles

[John Tytgat]

In message <Marcel-1.53-0325135756-3136#xE at druck.freeuk.com>
          "David J. Ruck" <druck at freeuk.com> wrote:

> On Sat 25 Mar, Jonathan Coxhead wrote:
> [...]
> 
> Arrrrrh! Any changes to library should result in a complete rebuild of
> any projects that use it - anything else is extreamly dangerous. All
> makefiles should have a dependancy on the both the headers for objects
> and the library for the executable, to take care of this automatically.

True.

> >    (2) Throughout RISC O S, the code assumes its a byte, so it's not 
> > going to change.
> 
> That is not a valid assumption, much of RISC OS is going to be re-written
> in the near future. While you cannot guess all the implications of this
> now, simple things such as ensuring the current API is implemented without
> any invalid assuptions will mean code has a much better change of continuing
> to work.

AFAIK the file handle is not declared as a byte in the PRM's, so RISC OS
(say, FileSwitch) is perfectly able to return a >255 value one day.  I
would like that my OSLib programs do not break on these RISC OS versions.

Let's make it future ready please.

John.
-- 
John Tytgat, in his comfy chair at home       Ikiru to iu koto no zeitaku sa
John.Tytgat at aaug.net                       Ichinichi ikkai wa warai nasai yo
BASS                                                      -Nagaharu Yodogawa