Damn phone didn't let me reply all
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "J. R. Mauro" <jrm8005(a)gmail.com>
> Date: July 1, 2009 10:00:44 EDT
> To: Mike Frysinger <vapier(a)gentoo.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wlug] Making a pipe or socket look like a file.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 1, 2009, at 9:33, Mike Frysinger <vapier(a)gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday 30 June 2009 22:35:44 J. R. Mauro wrote:
>>> On Jun 30, 2009, at 22:24, Mike Frysinger wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday 30 June 2009 21:47:18 J. R. Mauro wrote:
>>>>
>>>> please dont top post
>>>
>>> Who did?
>>
>> i'm guessing you made this comment ironically
>
> Actually, I was probably drunk, and I was definitely typing on my
> phone both times, so forgive me if I wasn't an ml-etiquette zealot.
>
> Moving things is a worse sin than top posting.
>
>>
>>
>>>>> On Jun 30, 2009, at 21:42, Alex Camilo <alex.camilo(a)gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> I'm trying to extend the functionality of a piece of CAD software
>>>>>> i'm using. The software package is called eagle and it has a
>>>>>> custom
>>>>>> in application scripting language that allows you to access an
>>>>>> open
>>>>>> CAD document by manipulating a tree of objects. The scripting
>>>>>> language is fairly limited when it comes to talking to the
>>>>>> outside
>>>>>> world and only offers rudimentary file IO. I was wondering if
>>>>>> any of
>>>>>> you know how to make one end of a unix socket look like a file?
>>>>>
>>>>> Unfortunately, you can't. It's one of the design flaws of Unix.
>>>>> You
>>>>> might be able to wrap it with a FUSE filesystem. But sockets and
>>>>> FIFOs
>>>>> are unfortunately "special"
>>>>
>>>> i imagine you could use netcat to redirect from a named pipe so
>>>> that
>>>> you can
>>>
>>> FIFOs are kind of a hack.
>>
>> no one said otherwise. the fun thing about *nix is you can
>> leverage these
>> kind of hacks quickly.
>
> And then go through the pain of hacking on top of them and
> supporting them. The *real* unix mindset was careful, elegantly
> minimal design, not ad-hackery. That started outside Bell Labs.
>
> c.f. most perl programs
>
>>
>>
>>> Make a fuse filesystem in 20 lines of python
>>> and you get something more robust and specialized, plus network
>>> transparency for free
>>
>> if you say so, i havent done fuse work myself
>> -mike
>
> It's laughably easy. I had a filesystem written to expose stuff from
> the x server (mouse coordinates, snarf buffer, etc) in about four
> hours. The hard part was dealing with how crappy x11 is (400 lines
> to r/w the snarf buffer?! Gag me with a spoon! X is the epitome of
> bad design and bad APIs) The fuse part was a joy, and probably all
> of it was fewer lines than the snarf buffer.
>
> It seems like the OP wants a permanent solution, and maybe one that
> involves biderectional communication and separation of roles into
> multiple channels (he didn't say the last bit, but I've got five
> bucks that says he'll want to once he thinks about it and looks at
> other fileserver-based programs like Acme, rio, factotum, flickrfs,
> etc)
>
> Using fifos for this is lunacy.
