From: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
To: arnold@skeeve.com
Cc: johnl@taugh.com, tuhs@tuhs.org, marc.donner@gmail.com
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Pipes (was Re: After 50 years, what has the Impact of Unix been?)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2024 16:12:34 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W4WAb9JO8VAPpHH9eB0=-EnJr0MySt_YH_eTUdTERqoUw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202412052055.4B5KtYf1781856@freefriends.org>
On Thu, Dec 5, 2024 at 3:56 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> Chet Ramey via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> > On 12/5/24 10:19 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
> >
> > > Unix pipelines, on the other hand, tend to be used in a manner that is
> > > strictly linear, without the fan-out and fan-in capabilities described
> > > by Morrison. Of course, nothing prevents one from building a
> > > Morrison-style "network" from Unix processes and pipes, though it's
> > > hard to see how that would work without something like `select`, which
> > > didn't yet exist in 1978. Regardless, Unix still doesn't expose a
> > > particularly convenient syntax for expressing these sorts of
> > > constructions at the shell.
> >
> > Process substitution is about as close as we can get, but most programs
> > still process their filename arguments one at a time, beginning to end.
> >
> > The canonical process substitution example is
> >
> > diff <(old-program-version) <(new-program-version)
> >
> > to do simple regression testing.
>
> And fanout is simply
>
> ... | tee >(pipeline1) >(pipeline2)
And indeed these things are pretty nifty, but don't they generate
trees, and not arbitrary dags? They don't quite capture the full
generality of Morrison-style networks since it doesn't seem like
there's a way to connect process substitution fan-out with fan-in; at
least, not conveniently.
It is, perhaps, notable that Go allows me to do this sort of thing
with channels and goroutines, but it has `select` built into the
language.
Funny, despite using Unix almost daily for over 30 years now, I don't
think I've ever felt limited by the power of pipelines. On the
contrary, I've lost count of the times I've felt limited on systems
that do Not support pipes.
- Dan C.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-12-05 21:13 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-12-04 3:17 [TUHS] After 50 years, what has the Impact of Unix been? sjenkin
2024-12-04 13:05 ` [TUHS] " Marc Donner
2024-12-04 13:40 ` William Cheswick
2024-12-04 15:02 ` Rich Salz
2024-12-05 3:08 ` John Levine
2024-12-05 15:19 ` [TUHS] Re: Pipes (was Re: After 50 years, what has the Impact of Unix been?) Dan Cross
2024-12-05 16:00 ` John R Levine
2024-12-05 16:17 ` Heinz Lycklama
2024-12-05 17:06 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-12-05 17:53 ` John Cowan
2024-12-05 18:05 ` John Levine
2024-12-05 17:22 ` Paul Winalski
2024-12-05 18:19 ` Ron Natalie
2024-12-06 2:29 ` Adam Thornton
2024-12-07 20:38 ` Ron Natalie
2024-12-05 16:55 ` Adam Thornton
2024-12-05 17:35 ` Chet Ramey via TUHS
2024-12-05 20:55 ` arnold
2024-12-05 21:12 ` Dan Cross [this message]
2024-12-05 21:50 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-12-05 22:03 ` Warner Losh
2024-12-05 22:19 ` Chet Ramey via TUHS
2024-12-05 23:07 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-12-06 8:16 ` Diomidis Spinellis
2024-12-06 0:46 ` Alexis
2024-12-06 21:46 ` Chet Ramey via TUHS
2024-12-05 23:07 ` arnold
2024-12-06 1:09 ` G. Branden Robinson
2024-12-06 1:31 ` Greg A. Woods
2024-12-06 2:05 ` Steve Nickolas
2024-12-06 16:44 ` arnold
2024-12-05 22:05 ` Bakul Shah via TUHS
2024-12-06 2:02 ` John Levine
2024-12-06 2:21 ` Dan Cross
2024-12-06 16:46 ` arnold
2024-12-06 2:26 Douglas McIlroy
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