[Python-Dev] Fw: SocketServer and makefile() [from comp.lang.python] (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@beopen.com
Thu, 31 Aug 2000 16:10:19 -0500

> > Dunno why the unbuffered reading would be slow. I'd think it would still > > read large chunks at a time when you request it. > > System call overhead? I had the same complaint about Windows, where > apparently winsock makes you pay more of a performance penalty than > Unix does in the same case.

Shouldn't be. There should still be an rfile.read(1000) in that example app (with the big transfers). That read() should be quite fast -- the buffering should have almost no effect. So... what is the underlying problem? [ IOW, there are two issues: the sock vs file thing; and why rfile is so darn slow; I have no insights on the latter. ]

Should, shouldn't...

It's a quality of implementation issue in stdio. If stdio, when seeing a large read on an unbuffered file, doesn't do something smart but instead calls getc() for each character, that would explain this. It's dumb, but not illegal.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)