From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun May 11 15:16:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA15716 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 11 May 1997 15:16:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phobos.illtel.denver.co.us (abelits@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us [207.33.75.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA15707 for ; Sun, 11 May 1997 15:16:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (abelits@localhost) by phobos.illtel.denver.co.us (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id PAA06178; Sun, 11 May 1997 15:21:09 -0700 Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 15:21:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Alex Belits To: "John S. Dyson" cc: Andrew Gierth , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: socketpair() In-Reply-To: <199705111800.NAA08334@dyson.iquest.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 11 May 1997, John S. Dyson wrote: > > 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. As I understand, bidirectional pipes in SVR4 are only a side effect of STREAMS, and original BSD anonymous pipes (as they are described everywhere and treated by programmers) are unidirectional. I never seen any code, for BSD or SysV, that depends on bidirectional anonymous pipes (for bidirectional connection two pipes are always used). -- Alex