Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sco!brianm
From: brianm@sco.COM (Brian Moffet)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: GaaaK! Unix networking called "GOOD"?!?
Summary: Chaos Vs. *Nix
Keywords: Unix SYSV 4.2 Amiga
Message-ID: <538@viscous>
Date: 10 May 88 16:24:26 GMT
References: <517@viscous> <10227@stb.UUCP> <147@elgar.UUCP>
Reply-To: brianm@sco.COM (Brian Moffet)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Lines: 45


I read with interest the article comparing CHAOS and Unix
OS's.   CHAOS sounds really nice, but I don't have access
to it at all.  I read an article somewhere about how nice
it would have been but too bad Amiga-DOS is here.  
(for you Commodore people out there, Amiga Dos is better than
DOS as far as I am concerned.)

However, the ability to handle fork() and a common set of 
InterProcess Communications between child and parent
process would help greatly.  Most times, vfork() could be used,
yes.  However, there are times when one must use some
other tactics.  system()  is out because I personally don't
want the overhead of the shell.    For example:

a program which is doing some graphics which involves 
asking the user for a mathematical equation, like
sin(x*y) and then plots it.

An easy way to handle this is to have your parent program
write and compile a secondary program in the back ground while
asking the user for parameters.  Once the secondary program
is compiled (found out by wait()), do a fork and dup() to
force the child process to talk via a pipe to the parent
process.  The parent can then give the child a set of
paramters to the equation, and the child responds with the 
answer.  Very simple, but with a lot of overhead.

However, this method has less overhead than continuously running
a program everytime you want an answer, which is the only
way I could figure out how to do this under the ami.  I
have not been able to figure out Messages quite yet.

Oh well, sorry for rambling, I thought I would give an example
of what I have done under Unix but not been able to do under
the amiga.

However, the amiga does handle ports of single task programs 
fairly well.


-- 
Brian Moffet		brianm@sco.com  {uunet,decvax!microsof}!sco!brianm
The opinions expressed are not quite clear and have no relation to my employer.
'Evil Geniuses for a Better Tommorrow!'