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Path: utzoo!utcsri!flaps
From: flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Pipes
Message-ID: <4049@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Feb-87 16:33:31 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.4049
Posted: Mon Feb  2 16:33:31 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Feb-87 05:39:57 EST
References: <946@tekred.UUCP>
Reply-To: flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal)
Organization: University of Toronto
Lines: 23
Summary: 

In article <946@tekred.UUCP> joels@tekred.UUCP writes:
>The real advantage of pipes over files that imitate them is that all
>processes in the chain can run simultaneously. The second process can start
>as soon as the pipe buffer has data in it.

Hopefully this is not just a nitpick: the second process can start before the
buffer has any data in it.  Thus the first and second processes can both do
their initialization at once.  In other words, the second process is blocked
not merely on an empty pipe, but on a read to an empty pipe.

Another advantage of real pipes, by the way, is that you can provide terminal
input to the first process based on the output of the second process; this
allows a kind of interactive front-end in the style of 'bc'.  bc couldn't be
implemented how it is here on a non-multitasking system.
-- 

Alan J Rosenthal

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