Christoph Bauer wrote:
>>> ...
>>> I did this, but on windows with two programs communicating 
>> over a pipe 
>>> this isn't enough. select on windows and on a pipe doesn't work. 
>>> Therefore I wrote a stub for PeekNamedPipe():
>> "Select on windows" certainly does work... and why not use a 
>> socket pair, just as one might on a *nix system?  That way, 
>> it will work on both.
> 
> Select doesn't work on window pipes. In retrospect sockects
> would be the better choice. I stumbled in a strange dead lock
> with theses pipes, because under windows the pipe buffer
> is set to 1024 bytes (otherlibs/win32unix/pipe.c) and will then
> block til the reader reads the contents. IMO this
> value (SIZEBUF) should be zero to let the system choose the best
> buffer size. [1] 
> 
>> And the fact that socketpair has been left out of the Windows 
>> version of the Unix module is not an impediment - it is easy 
>> to write a useful implementation in OCaml (I can supply one 
>> if needed).
> 
> Please supply one.

Here is what I use:

open Unix
module U2 = struct
   let socketpair af typ proto =
     let listener = socket af typ proto in
     let listener_addr = ADDR_INET(inet_addr_loopback, 0) in
     bind listener listener_addr;
     listen listener 1;
     let listener_name = getsockname listener in
     let connector = socket af typ proto in
     connect connector listener_name;
     let acceptor_full = accept listener in
     close listener;
     (* assert ((getsockname connector) = (snd acceptor_full)); *)
     (connector, (fst acceptor_full))
end

... and then select this socketpair or the one from the Unix module at 
runtime.

Robert Roessler
roessler@rftp.com
http://www.rftp.com