Searching CPAN for a module to help me manipulate a magnetic tape device , I discovered Mt version 0.0.1 : ) , Which is a wrapper for mt in perl. This is something I used to do constantly in my previous job IE make perlscripts that were 'aware' of things like fsf,bsf,bot,eod and would do a pretty good job of positioning the tape for appends, even to the point of abstracting the tape further away from the program, keeping a running index as the last element on tape AKA CiTransfer (if you've had the _pleasure_ )

What really struck me as odd though is that the CPAN Mt has only two methods, a constructor and a ->command method, which is passed a hash that describes 

( -command=>'fsf etc here' ,
  -count=>'some number',
  -args=>@arrayref );

[download]

If that's a wrapper , then what have I written? an interface ?. My module uses methods like ; 

$tape->forward(2);
$tape->rewind;
$tape->positionforWrite;
$tape->checkindex
$tape->writeindex(@index);

[download]

Is this any use to any bugger but me? Could one monk spout more rhetoric in a single meditation ? I would hope not. To be revisited.

In reply to Talking to Magnetic Tapes by submersible_toaster

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.