> Why does everybody use tcp ports instead of file sockets for local communication?
In my experience it's because Windows and mac developers aren't aware of local file sockets. Windows API, in particular, doesn't have a similar concept if I recall.
On the most popular UNIX-like operating system, Linux, there's are literally zero references to UDS to mean UNIX domain sockets.
$ sudo mandb
$ man -K UDS
The point is that acronyms that are not context appropriate and/or very uncommon are quite annoying to come across. I guess it was worth saving a dozen bytes not to write the full thing in the first place.
Wow, interesting - I didn't know that. That is very cool... no more special handling for windows in cross platform handling then it sounds like (at least for UDS).
In my experience it's because Windows and mac developers aren't aware of local file sockets. Windows API, in particular, doesn't have a similar concept if I recall.