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2012-10-10

Socket in other words SRFI-106

I'm currently working on SRFI-106 which I proposed (wow, sounds like i'm doing something cool, haha).

Now, I'm wondering if it's possible to make extensible APIs for future socket changes. The trigger to think is this message;
However, an API that is designed so that implementations can extend it to support things like Unix domain sockets, etc. without changing the basic design of the API might be better.
From SRFI-106 mailing list
 I super agree with it. But is it possible? To make this simple, let me target only Unix domain socket.

As far as I understand, Unix domain socket means file system socket like /tmp/socket1.s or something like this (, isn't it?). To create this, create a socket FD passing AF_UNIX (or AF_LOCAL) flag to socket(2), set filesystem path string to struct sockaddr_un's sun_path member, then call bind(2) with socket FD and sockaddr_un set before. This is UNIX (or POSIX) way to create local socket.
Now, let's see how it goes with Windows. Well, unfortunately Windows doesn't have this type of socket. If you want to do sort of the same thing, you need to do either creating a local address socket or using PIPE. Creating a local address socket would be portable way but occupies a port. Using pipe provides the same thing as UNIX but code won't be portable.

Yes, implementation can wrap those ugly part with beautifully abstracted API (if i can...). Or if AF_UNIX equivalent flag is passed on Windows environment, implementation can just raise an error.
Well, then here comes my next question. Is it basic? I might stick too much with this word. But I would rather make small world than bigger and lower layer world with this SRFI. Flexisibility is important. I believe simplicity is also important. I think I'm too lazy to introduce a lot of features such as addrinfo data type or other procedures. And it might be from my ignorance of socket programming.

Sort of brain storming. I'm still thinking if there is a nicer way to keep both flexibility and simplicity as much as possible.

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