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Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:00:24 +0200
From: Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>
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Subject: Re: Why no socket package in the standard ?
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Date: 2011-05-24T12:00:24+02:00
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On 24.05.11 09:19, Thomas Løcke wrote:
> On 05/24/2011 09:07 AM, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
>> Java, C# (.NET), Python, etc. are easy examples of more or less recent
>> languages that support sockets in their standard libraries.
> 
> 
> And, for what it is worth, PHP.


and Pike [*],
(and CSNOBOL-4 [**]),
and anything supported by SWIG,
and Haskell [***]
and ...

1. The reason simply is that each and every of them has started
by offering some glue code for the BSD/POSIX socket functions.
.NET languages will likely just use a .NET class.

But there have been and will be difficulties when porting
the languages' alleged "standard" libraries to non-POSIX
(or non-.NET) operating systems.  Perhaps the difficulties
are even conceptual ones whenever POSIX sockets don't really
meet the networking requirements.

Define

  Commercially_Important_Platforms := {
    ∃ target | POSIX(target) IN { False, True }
  }

How large is the subset defined by POSIX(target) = False?
Is POSIX/Sockets the best Ada solution when this is the case?


2. In the light of Ada's history regarding standardization,
there is, I believe, networking knowledge that warrants more
than canonization of a practical workaround---which might fail
if requirements are actually different.

Opposing a get-that-duct-tape-solution-out–the-door style for
standardization, I'd imagine starting from questions like the
following and then weigh POSIX sockets as the possible answer:

- What should programs be able to do when communicating data
  along some network connection?

- Should there be a layered approach?  How much detail?

- Where in the language will this integrate nicely?
  (E.g. package structure? What types if any?  Or anything
  that has already been mentioned.)

- Is sockets the right approach?  Consider Erlang!

- Is sockets the right approach?  Consider a CAN!

I doubt that the best answer to these questions can
be summed up by saying, "Mirror Posix sockets!".



___
[*] http://pike.ida.liu.se/generated/manual/modref/ex/predef_3A_3A/Stdio/Port.html

[**] http://www.snobol4.org/csnobol4/curr/doc/snobol4.html

[***] "Haskell's networking functions almost always correspond
directly to familiar C function calls."
http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/sockets-and-syslog.html