Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 11:20:31 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, phk@critter.tfs.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG, julian@ref.tfs.com, scrappy@ki.net Subject: Re: PATCH: small, syntax changes for devfs Message-ID: <199603221820.LAA02981@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199603220716.SAA24449@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Mar 22, 96 06:16:51 pm
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> wd0s1 is there, and opening it would reveal wd0s1[a-h], but this isn't > much use. Perhaps wd0s1 should be a directory containing [a-h]. I > prefer a flat namespace. Why? It's possible, of course, to "chunk up" names, 2 characters at a time, to build a flat name space, but is this necessary or even desirable? At the very least, each device should be treated as a directory for the purposes of getdirents and the ISDIR attributes, anyway. It lets you have "status" and other information in the "directory". For the purposes of read/write, you treat it as a file. Consider: a device reference is a vnode reference in devfs: all lookup instances are predicated on the path to the devfs. That means I can access devices remotely without modifications (assuming no layer 5 differentiation between systems -- if B9600 isn't the same on both boxes, well, you're pretty much screwed). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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