> And neither are the tapes. But the pipes, apparently, are.
The "slow vs fast" language is really unfortunate, I realize it's traditional but it's unnecessarily confusing.
A better way to conceptualize it IMHO is bounded vs unbounded: a file or a tape contains a fixed amount of data known a priori, a socket or a pipe does not.
> And neither are the tapes. But the pipes, apparently, are.
The "slow vs fast" language is really unfortunate, I realize it's traditional but it's unnecessarily confusing.
A better way to conceptualize it IMHO is bounded vs unbounded: a file or a tape contains a fixed amount of data known a priori, a socket or a pipe does not.