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Unix is a very apt example. We wouldn’t be piping text around if it were designed today - but it does work decently well.
by jdsully 8y ago
Unix is a very apt example. We wouldn’t be piping text around if it were designed today - but it does work decently well.
- mjevans 8y agoIt's not text, it's opaque character streams. (C 'char' type) Practically speaking, for the flavors of UNIX like systems most will work with this is equivalent to streams of 8 bit, clean-transferred, characters. Any other kind of transfer system that you might want to build can be built on top of that. This interlinking design is the minimum viable product, and also the lowest level one. Comparing to a more recent design, such as PowerShell, transfer of objects limits flexibility and requires more shared infrastructure.