On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 8:03 AM, Andrew Berg <bahamutzero8...@gmail.com> wrote: > processes (that aren't necessarily written in Python) ... > non-local processes would be nice ... > The implementation needs to be cross-platform ... > I don't think I'll ever need to transfer anything complicated or large - > just strings or possibly tuples/lists. > I'm thinking sockets, but perhaps there's something simpler/easier.
Definitely sockets, as other posters have said. The only question is, what encapsulation format (since sockets give just a stream of bytes). Since you want non-Python processes to be involved, I would be inclined to avoid using Python's own pickling system; JSON may be viable, and it's well known so you should be able to find support in other languages. Alternatively, take a careful look at your dataset and invent your own system. If your strings will never contain a pipe character, you could define a tuple/list to be simply pipe-separated strings; if they'll never contain newlines, you can specify your protocol to be newline-terminated. For command/response protocols over TCP/IP, I strongly recommend poking around with existing protocols such as the email trio (SMTP, POP, and IMAP); there's many good ideas to be gained from them. If you can, try to keep your protocol to ASCII text. It makes debugging far easier, as you can simply point a telnet/mud client at your server and manually step through things. Chris Angelico -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
