rosalia@sbcs (Mark Galassi) (11/18/87)
> > ... Anybody know where the documentation [on FIFOs] is hiding?
Maurice Bach describes the implementation of FIFOs, and how the
various file access system calls treat them as opposed to normal
files, but there are two books on UNIX system calls which treat
FIFOs quite extensively. These two books are about UNIX *externals*
so they tell you what you can do with these system calls, not
how they are implemented.
One is Programming the UNIX System by Dunsmuir and Davies
(Halsted Press, ISBN=0-470-20192-4), and the other is Advanced
UNIX Programming by Marc J. Rochkind (the famous Prentice Hall
Software Series, ISBN=0-13-011800-1). They are both quite nice,
and there is a good feature: neither of the three authors knows
much about BSD (or at least they don't talk about it in their
books). Result: the discussions use a common denominator, which
is sort of System V.2, but with lots on what can be don if you
only have V7 or System III.
You can use FIFOs on Suns (and from what someone said, also
on pyramids, though I have not tried myself), and it would certainly
be a nice and not-too-hard project to write a library with mkfifo()
that uses mknod(...FIFO) on system III/V, and socket() and bind()
with BSD 4.[23] and 2.10. Someone ambitious and patient could
even write a V7 binding using files (I'm not sure how).
--
Mark Galassi
...!{pyramid,philabs,allegra}!sbcs!mozart!rosalia
{ these opinions are mine, and should be everybody else's :-) }