Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!rex!ukma!sean From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: Names pipes or UNIX domain sockets? Message-ID: <1991Jun15.204226.25191@ms.uky.edu> Date: 15 Jun 91 20:42:26 GMT Organization: The Leaning Tower of Patterson Office @ The Univ. of KY Lines: 23 Okay so I'm writing an application where two dissimilar processes need to shove pieces of data at each other in a non-blocking fashion. Process A talks to processes B, C, and D in a star fashion. Any of these processes can be restarted if necessary. I could do one of the following: - FIFOs, which are likely to be the most efficient implementation, but which might be less portable than sockets. But there's POSIX... - UNIX domain sockets, which are (IMHO) a little funkier to set up. But I'm comfy with sockets so that's no real trouble. One thing I noticed is that when a program opens a named pipe, and there's nothing else that has it open, then it just blocks indefinitely, while a UNIX domain socket will get the connection refused if there's nothing to listen. Anyone care to share experiences with the relative merits of the two? Sean -- ** Sean Casey