[Haskell-cafe] Re: whatever happened to sendFile?

[Jason Dusek]

John Meacham <john at repetae.net> wrote:
> There isn't a standard unix sendfile, while a few different
> ones have functions called 'sendfile', they have different
> meanings/prototypes in general. If 'sendfile(2)' is going to
> be exposed, it should be in a low level platform specific
> library, however, since you are dealing with deciding to use
> unportable behavior, it is hard to see what this will gain
> over a manual FFI wrapper.

  Well, for my purposes, I need to have at least three of them
  -- Linux, Darwin (BSD) and Windows. However, I think you are
  ultimately right, the heterogenity of sendfile() suggests that
  one should not stomp all over it with yet another variant.

  Maybe a reasonable compromise is a function that is more
  limited by design, with a distinctive name -- `fileSock`? --
  that offers access to a universal subset of the functionality
  of sendfile() -- namely, pushing a file's contents over a
  socket efficiently.

-- 
_jsn