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To: Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov>
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: poll(2) 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 Dec 1996 16:28:17 MST."
             <32ACA091.2EFB@fsl.noaa.gov> 
Date: Mon, 09 Dec 1996 18:41:37 -0500
From: Bakul Shah <bakul@plexuscom.com>
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> Nice though it is, it's a terrible name for a system call.  You use it
> to avoid polling ... and yet it's called "poll".  (Of course, the
> reminder of SysV doesn't help much either. :-)

Well, your program _is_ polling; it is polling a whole bunch of file
descriptors all at once!  It is avoiding busy-waiting (a strange
phrase) but that is just an implementation detail!  And yes, please
do not remind us of sysV :-)