Communication with existing non-Erlang processes ?

Raimo Niskanen raimo@REDACTED
Thu Mar 28 13:55:52 CET 2002


Well, it has ben "about to be replaced" for quite some time now, but we
cannot remove named pipe support without replacing it with something
fairly equivalent, and replacing it will have to wait until it does not
take resources from something more important.

In other words: named pipes will be supported also in the future roughly
as it is today, and it will not change in the near future (at least not
in R9).

The entusiastic user may write a linked-in driver that handles named
pipes, which probably is the way we will have to do it.

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB



Due to lack of resources we will not remove named pipe support


". zist" wrote:
> 
> I recently discovered Erlang and I am thinking about using it
> for some of our projects.
> 
> While Erlang documentation explains clearly the different ways
> to call C functions or spawn a new external process and communicate
> with it through a port, it is less explicit concerning communication
> with already
> existing processes.
> There is always the possibility to use sockets but sometimes it is
> "overkill"
> on the external process side and not always appropriate.
> For processes on the same cpu, it is often useful to use named pipes
> (fifo) as an IPC mechanism.
> 
> But how is this supported on Erlang/OTP ?
> Using file:open("name fifo",[]) doesn't work on named pipes (it works
> for regular
> files).
> Using open_port("name fifo", []) seems to work
> (it worked in my erlang shell, I haven't yet sent/received info over
> the pipe)
> but the documentation (Kernel reference manual version 2.7, module
> erlang, under
> open_port) states that for
> open_port(PortName ...) with an Atom as PortName (name of the named
> pipe)
> "This use of open_port() is obsolete and will be removed in a future
> version of Erlang. Use the file module instead"
> 
> So are named pipes/fifo officially supported in Erlang ?
> If open_port with Atoms (named pipes) is soon to be removed,  can we
> be sure
> that at this time file:open will then support named pipes ?
> 
> According to the archives, someone already asked a similar question
> in July 2001 ("named pipe as port ?") but without any answer.
> 
> Thanks,
> Christophe Lesourd
> InSerTO
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: Click Here



More information about the erlang-questions mailing list