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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!news.mira.net.au!news.vbc.net!vbcnet-west!knews.uk0.vbc.net!vbcnet-gb!azure.xara.net!xara.net!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!news.nacamar.de!uunet!in1.uu.net!202.232.2.100!np1.iij.ad.jp!nf0.iij.ad.jp!nr0.iij.ad.jp!news.iij.ad.jp!news.CET.CO.JP!usenet From: Michael Hancock <michaelh@cet.co.jp> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Sys V Streams Vs. BSD Sockets Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 13:06:43 -0800 Organization: CET Message-ID: <33383E63.754@cet.co.jp> References: <5h4rte$92a@news.interlog.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: chaos.cet.co.jp Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.0b2 (WinNT; I) X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Lines: 24 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37914 Paul Griffith wrote: > > I know this is a generic Unix question (if there is such a thing), but > where can I find a FAQ on the major differences in streams and sockets > ? Is one better for some tasks ?? I don't know if there's a FAQ for this. The interfaces are similar, but the semantics are very different. For example sockets return errors synchronously while in streams errors are usually returned asynchronously. Streams can be parallelized easier on SMP systems, but streams implementations typically also have more overhead than sockets. You should get some books on Unix programming. Richard Stevens' books cover mostly sockets. Steve Rago wrote a book on SYSV that probably covers streams. For a general survey of various Unix systems read, Unix Internals: The New Frontiers, by Uresh Vahalia. Regards, Mike Hancock