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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Regular pipe vs. Named Pipe
Message-ID: <2308.Jun1422.02.2591@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 14 Jun 91 22:02:25 GMT
References: <28552162.546B@tct.com> <25293:Jun1217:36:2291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Jun13.144148.3842@chinet.chi.il.us>
Organization: IR
Lines: 20

In article <1991Jun13.144148.3842@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
> In article <25293:Jun1217:36:2291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> >In contrast, a system doesn't have to support named pipes to be UNIX.
> >Lots of UNIX systems didn't---and still don't---have named pipes. So
> >named pipes aren't part of UNIX. They're just an add-on, a feature which
> >happens to be supported in similar ways by several vendors but isn't
> >available everywhere.
> In what way is this different from sockets?  Or any other IPC mechanism
> besides plain files and signals that doesn't require a common parent to
> set things up?

It's not. As you just observed, the only IPC mechanisms that are part of
UNIX are plain files, signals, and pipes. Sockets are part of BSD UNIX;
they're not part of UNIX in general. That's why it's such a pain to
write some types of code without restricting yourself to one flavor or
another of the system. It looks like UNIX in five or ten years will
uniformly support sockets and named pipes; at that point my evaluation
will change.

---Dan