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From: Wes Peters <wes@dayna.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Sys V Streams Vs. BSD Sockets
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 16:36:32 -0700
Organization: Dayna Communications
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Message-ID: <333C5600.2D7C@dayna.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37947
Paul Griffith asked:
% 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 ??
Mike Hancock replied:
> 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.
There are some large differences; "STREAMS" covers a lot more than just
the SVR4 TCP/IP Transport Layer Interface (tli). W. Richard Stevens
does a pretty good job of comparing the SVR4 network and IPC systems
to the Berkeley sockets interfaces in his books _Advanced Programming
in the UNIX Environment_.
--
Wes Peters It was a diamond as big as the Ritz
Software Engineer What you gonna do with this, tell me
Dayna Communications Who's gonna save you when you're a slave to
A diamond as big as the Ritz