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From: Peter da Silva <peter@bonkers.taronga.com>
Message-Id: <199507290128.UAA13450@bonkers.taronga.com>
Subject: What's in a name
To: hackers@freebsd.org
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 1995 20:28:16 -0500 (CDT)
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> You misunderstood me.  I was raising the issue of ioctl() as one
> argument (there are more) about how mapping all your devices and files
> through a filesystem model was WRONG.  And yes, I think the /proc
> filesystem is an abortion too.

It's good to have a single namespace for all objects visible to the system.

This means that one way or another everything has to map into the filesystem,
since most objects on the system are files.

The alternative is to have special unique system calls for every possible
kind of device, which bloats the API incredibly. If you want NT, you know
where to find it.

I've done more programming on operating systems with unique APIs for
different kinds of devices than I ever want to: a uniform interface with
a uniform namespace is *much* better. It's one of the things I most like
about UNIX. Where UNIX falls short is where it departs from this model:
abortions like Sewers and the System V IPC interfeces.

What's the FreeBSD-flame mailing list again?