From: utzoo!watmath!padpowell
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: UNIX wish-list
Article-I.D.: watmath.4105
Posted: Fri Dec 17 18:38:40 1982
Received: Sat Dec 18 04:58:48 1982
References: ihnet.106

How about process message passing/create/destroy?
pid Create( [args as in exec] )
pid Destroy( pid ) : destroys named process, returns NULL if it does not exist.
Send( addr, pid ) : send fixed number of bytes of message to process named.
		return NULL if does not exist.
pid Receive( addr ) : blocks and waits for message from any process, returns
		pid of sending process
pid Rec_specific( addr, pid ) : blocks and waits for message from process pid,
		returns NULL if pid is dead, nonexistent, etc.
Reply( addr, pid ) : responds to message received from process pid,
		and will cause the message pointed to by addr to be placed
		in the senders message buffer.
I personally would settle for very short messages, say 16 bytes.  Even 8
bytes would be nice.  Some advocates of message passing demand variable
length messages.  Would be nice, but is is debatable how usefull it would be.

Patrick Powell, VLSI Design Group, U. Waterloo