From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: <20101115032531.GB27578@opal.ai.ki> Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:26:40 +1100 Message-ID: From: Bruce Ellis To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] 9p vs http Topicbox-Message-UUID: 7e6f3418-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 i'm with john On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 3:20 PM, John Floren wrote: > Please see lsub's Op and my Streaming talk at the most recent IWP9. > > Also, regarding 'cat', the behavior of many basic tools is that, > barring any file arguments, they take stdin as input and output to > stdout, so cat's behavior makes sense to me. > > On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 10:25 PM, Sam Watkins wrote: >> hi, >> >> I am wondering what you think about the capabilities of 9p compared to >> http/1.1. =A0Perhaps this seems like an odd comparison, but I think 9p a= nd http >> are broadly similar in purpose and functionality. =A0While writing a sim= ple >> webserver, I got to thinking that http is really a very capable protocol= . >> >> http is text-based, it supports pipelining and arbitraty metadata. =A0As= far as I >> know, 9p does not support pipelining nor arbitraty metadata. =A0It seems= to me >> that these are big advantages for http. =A09p supports walking; are ther= e other >> things 9p can do which http cannot, which give 9p a significant advantag= e? >> >> Am I correct, that 9p does not support pipelining? =A0I suppose this wou= ld be a >> big problem. =A0For example, with http pipelining one may ask a server t= o HEAD >> (like stat) 10,000 files together, without having to wait for the respon= ses. >> Over a high latency link (e.g. Australia -> USA), this might save perhap= s an >> hour of waiting. >> >> Such an asyncronous interface might be useful even when accessing local = disks - >> if the filesystem receives 100 open/read/stat requests bundled together,= it >> might optimise disk access to minimise seeking, as is commonly done for = writes. >> >> By the way, I read the other day on this list that there is no need to i= mprove >> cat(1). =A0Well for me, I still feel that the command `cat` without args= should >> concatenate 0 files (producing no output), not copy stdin to stdout! >> >> >> Sam >> >> >> > >