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Author beazley
Recipients amaury.forgeotdarc, beazley, christian.heimes, donmez, georg.brandl, giampaolo.rodola, pitrou, rhettinger, wplappert
Date 2008-12-16.15:58:22
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Message-id <1229443104.25.0.331775326341.issue4561@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
In-reply-to
Content
I wish I shared your optimism about this, but I don't.  Here's a short 
explanation why.

The problem of I/O and the associated interface between hardware, the 
operating system kernel, and user applications is one of the most 
fundamental and carefully studied problems in all of computer systems.  
The C library and its associated I/O functionality provide the user-
space implementation of this interface.  However, if you peel the covers 
off of the C library, you're going to find a lot of really hairy stuff 
in there.  Examples might include:

1. Low-level optimization related to the system hardware (processor 
architecture, caching, I/O bus, etc.).  

2. Hand-written finely tuned assembly code. 

3. Low-level platform-specific system calls such as ioctl().

4. System calls related to shared memory regions, kernel buffers, etc. 
(i.e., optimizations that try to eliminate buffer copies). 

5. Undocumented vendor-specific "proprietary" system calls (i.e., 
unknown "magic").

So, you'll have to forgive me for being skeptical, but I just don't 
think any programmer is going to sit down and bang out a new 
implementation of buffered I/O that is going to match the performance of 
what's provided by the C library.

Again, I would love to be proven wrong.
History
Date User Action Args
2008-12-16 15:58:24beazleysetrecipients: + beazley, georg.brandl, rhettinger, amaury.forgeotdarc, pitrou, giampaolo.rodola, christian.heimes, donmez, wplappert
2008-12-16 15:58:24beazleysetmessageid: <1229443104.25.0.331775326341.issue4561@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2008-12-16 15:58:23beazleylinkissue4561 messages
2008-12-16 15:58:22beazleycreate