Re: Are We Back to the "Wars" Now ?

John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> writes:

Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:

Yes, our local nymshift troll seems to clearly not know what a pipe
is, nor care to learn either.

>
I *think* what he's meaning to say is this: while you can transfer any
arbitrary amount of data *through* a pipe, there is an upper limit to
how much you can have *in* a pipe at any one time; eventually, you hit
either *A.* an OS-imposed limit on buffer size, at which point things
start blocking as already discussed, or *B.* the upper bounds of
system memory, at which point the system will either start swapping
(in which case you lose any speed advantage) or blocking (as with
limited buffer size.)

That’s a very charitable interpretation, particularly given that the
reality of how pipes work has been described two or three times
recently.

That said, what probably shouldn't need saying here is that if you're
filling up all available space in a pipe such that you're regularly
hitting these limits, you're probably doing pipes wrong.

Pipes have a capacity of, typically, a few kilobytes and when that
capacity is reached, writers block until readers drain them.

All this stuff about filling RAM or swapping is just nonsense.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/