[Python-Dev] ActiveState & fork & Perl

[Gordon McMillan]

Fredrik Lundh writes:
> 
> time to implement channels?  (Tcl's unified abstraction
> for all kinds of streams that you could theoretically use
> something like select on.  sockets, pipes, asynchronous
> disk I/O, etc).

I have mixed feelings about those types of things. I've recently run 
across a number of them in some C/C++ libs.

On the "pro" side, they can give acceptable behavior and adequate 
performance and thus suffice for the majority of use.

On the "con" side, they're usually an order of magnitude slower than 
the raw interface, don't quite behave correctly in borderline 
situations, and tend to produce "One True Path" believers.

Of course, so do OSes, editors, languages, GUIs, browsers and colas.

> does select really work on ordinary files under Unix,
> btw?

Sorry, should've said "where a socket is a real fd" or some such...

just-like-God-intended-ly y'rs

- Gordon