[boost] Re: [Ann] socketstream library 0.7

From: Boris (boris_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-06-11 04:20:35

Aaron W. LaFramboise wrote:

Hi Aaron,

> Simon Richter wrote:
>
>> Hrm, I have never missed being able to access files from a lower
>> level than iostreams so far. :-) I never do binary I/O directly in my
>> applications but always implement an inserter/extractor pair that
>> uses streambuf iterators, though.
>>
>> iostreams' read()/write() should be enough for stream-based I/O, and
>> for datagrams I'd propose going through another step anyway (i.e.
>> have a separate stream class that does not derive from the standard
>> iostreams but rather allows inserting and extracting packets only.
>
> What write()?
>
> And as far as read(), can someone explain to me how its possible to
> use
> this interface for anything other than files?  As near as I can tell,
> it
> has no way of expressing how much data it actually read, which is
> unacceptable, and useless, and really next door to defect-land in my
> opinion.  readsome() returns streamsize, but this function isn't that
> useful either, as it will never trigger a call to underflow().

there was at least one long discussion about socket streams some time ago. 
If I recall correctly the discussion ended with 1) socket streams are 
desirable for a socket library as they provide an interface many developers 
are familiar with (these developers can then create simple network 
application quickly) and 2) socket streams can only support blocking I/O 
(even this could be limited though).

Boris

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