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From: jbvb@FTP.COM (James B. Van Bokkelen)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Sockets vs streams.  An attempt to answer the original question
Message-ID: <9008291448.AA14069@ftp.com>
Date: 29 Aug 90 14:48:23 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jbvb@ftp.com
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 19


    The way to do i/o on Dennis's streams was with "read" and "write".
    Network i/o, in general, looked *exactly* like local device i/o.  This
    is the way it should be, unlike what both Berkeley and AT&T have done
    (both have reluctantly conceded that most people want to use "read"
    and "write" and have made that work, but their hearts were clearly
    elsewhere).

I would say rather that using read/write on network connections is
the way most people would *like* it to be.  The reality is that on
most systems the local filesystem is a pretty tame beast compared to
a network connection.  Unless the OS/language combination's
read/write was designed with network connections in mind (which means
boolean flag arguments and wide variations in behaviour depending on
them), use of read/write is likely to result in a cantankerous and
unreliable network application...

James B. VanBokkelen		26 Princess St., Wakefield, MA  01880
FTP Software Inc.		voice: (617) 246-0900  fax: (617) 246-0901