6 Writing Pickles

GNU poke encourages the user to write little pieces of code in order to face spontaneous needs and fix situations. Is that name in the file encoded in a fixed array of characters padded with white spaces? No problem, just write a three lines function so you can update the file using a comfortable NULL-terminated string. Better than waiting for some poke maintainer to add that function for you, isn’t it?

Just save your functions in some personal .pk file that you load at startup, and your magic tricks bag will increase in time, making your poking more and more efficient.

However, when it comes to share the code with other people, it is important to follow certain conventions in order to achieve certain uniformity. This makes it easier for other people to discover what your hack provides, and how it works. It is this consistency, and these conventions, that makes some random .pk file a pickle.

This guide contains guidelines and recommendations for the pickle’s writer.