[comp.sys.amiga.tech] pipe.device ??

finkel@TAURUS.BITNET (07/13/90)

I wanted to write down some serial code, when I suddenly thought how nice
it would be to have a pipe.device! This device will behave very much
like the dos pipe: (thanks Matt!), but on the device level. from the software
point of view it will look like the serial.device, only it will buffer data
inside the Amiga's memory, so several programs could open different units
of the same pipe.device and exchange data.

For example, we could have by default unit 0 communicating with Unit 1,
unit 2 communicating with unit 3, etc. I could run 2 copies of any
communication software which supports flexible device/unit combinations, and
have them communicate with each other by setting one to access pipe.device
unit 0, and the other to access pipe.device unit 1.

A more common usage might be debugging serial code. your code doesn't work?
no problem! run a terminal program and watch the output! want to send some
input to your program? just type it in! want to test a new file transfer
protocol? just run 2 copies of your software and have them communicate with
the pipe.device!


Is there already such a device? I would be very interested to know if someone
already wrote such a device driver.

Udi

dale@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dale Luck - Amiga) (07/16/90)

In article <9007122133.AA07929@eggroll.tau.ac.il> <finkel%math.tau.ac.il@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> writes:
>I wanted to write down some serial code, when I suddenly thought how nice
>it would be to have a pipe.device! This device will behave very much
>like the dos pipe: (thanks Matt!), but on the device level. from the software
>point of view it will look like the serial.device, only it will buffer data
>inside the Amiga's memory, so several programs could open different units
>of the same pipe.device and exchange data.
>
There already is such a device that is being used in the Network
Working Group. It is the local domain device for SANA and handles
ipc stream connections between tasks on the same machine. There are
other SANA conforming devices that are being worked on or already
available. Such as TSSnet (DECnet for the Amiga), some tcp/ip implementations
as well as others.

Connections are not based on unit numbers but are actually a name
in the file system domain.

If you would like more specific imformation please email back.
Dale Luck
Commodore-Amiga, Inc.