Re: Proposal: merged system calls

cjs (cjs@netcom.com)
Fri, 24 May 1996 07:39:08 -0700 (PDT)


> these are 2.1 thoughts (but i cant wait :)
>
> [ yes master, going back betatesting soon :) ]
>
> one argument against kernel features is the overhead of the kernel-user
> space transitions. what about making it possible to call several syscalls
> at once ...
>
> an example:
>
> a HTTP server reads data from a file and sends it to another machine
> through a socket. These two system calls could be merged:
>
> the old method:
>
> read( 4, buffer, 100 );
> send( 5, buffer, 100, 0 );
>
> the proposed method:
>
> read_send( 4, 5, 100, 0 );

Hmmm.. couldn't you achieve something simular by mmap()'ing the file
and using that address as the argument to send? I bet you could.

I might also point out that people doing serious web work (not home
page for technical writing class) spend a significant amount of time
doing dynamicly created HTML and graphic files. So there is a
significant amount of time that your merged syscall wouldn't be
useful (unless you wrote the dynamic document to disk first).

Christopher