Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!stealth.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: async I/O
Message-ID: <20718@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 90 08:09:10 GMT
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
Lines: 20
X-Original-Subject: Is there a select()-like call for message queues?

I very much agree with Peter. The basic I/O calls should be asynchronous:
aread(), awrite(), and astatus(). aschedwait() and asyncwait() should wait
for scheduling and synchronization respectively; both should only be
special cases of a single await() call, with different semantics for
different devices and file types. Then my multitee program would be easy
to deal with, along with a host of related problems.

In article <CU318Y5xds13@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
> Secondly, I'm not suggesting that applications be forced to explicitly
> deal with asynchronism.

Exactly. read() and write() would be short library routines.

> I just believe that since the real world is
> asynchronous you should be able to deal with it.

Yup, and select() is only half a solution. (select() and poll() would be
forms of the more logically named await().)

---Dan