From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun May 11 11:00:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA06875 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 11 May 1997 11:00:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dyson.iquest.net (dyson.iquest.net [198.70.144.127]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA06866 for ; Sun, 11 May 1997 11:00:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from root@localhost) by dyson.iquest.net (8.8.5/8.6.9) id NAA08334; Sun, 11 May 1997 13:00:03 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" Message-Id: <199705111800.NAA08334@dyson.iquest.net> Subject: Re: socketpair() In-Reply-To: <87rafene42.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> from Andrew Gierth at "May 11, 97 05:54:37 pm" To: andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gierth) Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 13:00:02 -0500 (EST) Cc: toor@dyson.iquest.net, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > As far as I can tell, though, bidirectional pipes are still pretty much > confined to SVR4 (STREAMS pipes) and FreeBSD; most of the other flavours > I've encountered still use unidirectional pipes (at least by default; > some, like HP-UX 10.10, have a switch for it in the kernel parameters). > > In other words, having support for bidirectional pipes is nice, but > relying on them will probably get you into trouble. > > Is there actually any good reason for having bidirectional pipes, other > than for coping with code ported from SVR4? > I am neutral on them. Since they were cheap to add (someone else originally made our pipes bidirectional), I can't see a reason for not having them, except perhaps those who port from FreeBSD to other OSes. Whatever whomever added them wants, I'll be happy with the decision. John