files. Don't try this on Windows. On Windows, ``select`` works with sockets
only. Also note that in C, many of the more advanced socket options are done
differently on Windows. In fact, on Windows I usually use threads (which work
-very, very well) with my sockets. Face it, if you want any kind of performance,
-your code will look very different on Windows than on Unix.
+very, very well) with my sockets.
-Performance
------------
-
-There's no question that the fastest sockets code uses non-blocking sockets and
-select to multiplex them. You can put together something that will saturate a
-LAN connection without putting any strain on the CPU. The trouble is that an app
-written this way can't do much of anything else - it needs to be ready to
-shuffle bytes around at all times.
-
-Assuming that your app is actually supposed to do something more than that,
-threading is the optimal solution, (and using non-blocking sockets will be
-faster than using blocking sockets). Unfortunately, threading support in Unixes
-varies both in API and quality. So the normal Unix solution is to fork a
-subprocess to deal with each connection. The overhead for this is significant
-(and don't do this on Windows - the overhead of process creation is enormous
-there). It also means that unless each subprocess is completely independent,
-you'll need to use another form of IPC, say a pipe, or shared memory and
-semaphores, to communicate between the parent and child processes.
-
-Finally, remember that even though blocking sockets are somewhat slower than
-non-blocking, in many cases they are the "right" solution. After all, if your
-app is driven by the data it receives over a socket, there's not much sense in
-complicating the logic just so your app can wait on ``select`` instead of
-``recv``.
-
projects / python / commitdiff