The q-Interface to UNIX

This report describes an application program interface to UNIX called the q-interface. It is designed to provide the programmer with convenient access to a reliable, message-oriented asynchronous network transport service, and to asynchronous event handling in general. It utilizes a «call-back» paradigm to notify the programmer of the occurrence of asynchronous events, and guarantees that all call-backs are atomic. It hides both the notification mechanism of the underlying operating system and the underlying networking system, which in the first implementation is TCP/IP.