Hi,
this seems pretty stupid question but bothering me from quite long..
whats the basic difference in an application n driver..

suppose i wrote a serial port sniffer "application", is that driver or just application..

wots the boundry line or any basic difference. OS wise.

some places the difference is quite clear but at others it seems pretty blurred to me.

is it any application driving (setting, resetting hardware) is driver or there are software drivers too which has nothing to do with hardware and still are drivers.

thanx


-Abi

I thought a driver would be what interfaces with the hardware on a machine code level. If you talk to the hardware above that, you are talking through the driver. Does that sound right ?

From webopedia.com:

Driver:
"A driver acts like a translator between the device and programs that use the device. Each device has its own set of specialized commands that only its driver knows. In contrast, most programs access devices by using generic commands. The driver, therefore, accepts generic commands from a program and then translates them into specialized commands for the device."

Application:
"A program or group of programs designed for end users."