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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Query
Message-ID: <3580@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 18 Aug 90 09:58:10 GMT
References: <126800008@.Prime.COM> <60345@lanl.gov>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 24

In article <60345@lanl.gov>, jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
> From article <126800008@.Prime.COM>, by EAF@.Prime.COM:
> > ..., the language library will call on the OS to read the next block ...
> 
> Not on UNIX it won't.  There is no system call for the library to use
> which will start a read request and then return control to the library
> while the read is asynchronously processing.

> This is one of the most glaring deficiencies of UNIX.

This is half true.  See
	fcntl(fd, FASYNCH, ...)
in the programmer's manual.  Alas, there are lots of UNIX systems
that have _partly_ implemented it...

Isn't this one of the things being considered for POSIX?

(In System V, of course, one can always arrange this kind of thing
by putting the file buffers in a shared memory segment and setting
up another process to actually do the reads.  Before trying to do
the same thing with light-weight processes, check the fine print
in your manual about LWP/IO interactions...)
-- 
The taxonomy of Pleistocene equids is in a state of confusion.