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Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 18:56:03 -0400
From: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" <jeroen@vangelderen.org>
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To: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Cc: David O'Brien <obrien@FreeBSD.ORG>,
	Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai@FreeBSD.ORG>,
	current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Small MAKEDEV bug
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Bruce Evans wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 8 May 2000, David O'Brien wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, May 07, 2000 at 03:27:07PM -0400, Jeroen C. van Gelderen wrote:
> > > Or just settle for a more intuitive solution:
> > >  MAKEDEV acd2   creates /dev/acd2
> > >  MAKEDEV 2 acd  creates /dev/acd[01]
> > > which would allow for "MAKEDEV 64 da" and "MAKEDEV 256 pty"
> >
> > I agree with this syntax and after sending my message to you, was sitting
> > there thinking "MAKEDEV <num_of_devs> <dev_name>" would make a really
> > nice clear syntax.  If you can get BDE's buy-in and other BSD
> > traditionalists I think this would be great.
> 
> I don't buy it :-).  This syntax is similar to a special case of the syntax
> of jot(1).  It's better to use jot(1) directly, e.g.:
> 
>     MAKEDEV $(jot -w da 2 0)    # make 2 acd devices beginning at acd0

From this it follows that MAKEDEV should be modified to create just it's 
argument: MAKEDEV <dev>8 creates just <dev>8, not <dev>0-<dev>7.
Otherwise
MAKEDEV $(jot -w da 6 4) wouldn't work or violate POLA. Agreed?

Now it's a question of "the UNIX way" vs. convenience/userfriendlyness
:-)
Is it acceptable to have all users juggle with jot(1) or can we build
in a convenience syntax that covers 95% of all uses? I'd think the
latter, 
otherwise we might as well force our users to use mknod(8) and chmod(1) 
directly instead of MAKEDEV; After all, MAKEDEV is just a convenient 
wrapper around those commands.

So I'd still propose:
  MAKEDEV <count> <device_name_without_suffix>
  MAKEDEV <device_name_with_suffix> ...

As a consolation, added such a special syntax can be added in a few
lines
at the top of MAKEDEV, after which it recursively calls MAKEDEV with the
appropriate jot(1)-expanded device list. So it doesn't clobber the code.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Jeroen


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