Re: [boost] Sockets vs. net connection

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-12-29 10:34:43

At 11:54 PM 12/28/2000 +0000, Michael D. Crawford wrote:

 >I agree that whatever you call your network endpoint in a portable
 >library, you shouldn't call it a socket.  It's too loaded with meaning
 >to people who don't know how other platforms work.
 >
 >In Unix, TCP sockets are file descriptors and are inherited by child
 >processes after a fork.  It's a great technique, but it's unfortunately
 >become assumed by a lot of people that that's just how TCP works even
 >though it's highly platform specific.

You may be missing the point.  There are existence proofs that it is 
possible to design a sockets interface that works uniformly across 
platforms. It doesn't behave exactly like Unix, or any other specific 
platform.  Rather it defines its own behavior, and it is up to the various 
platform specific implementations to meet that behavior.

Cheers,

--Beman