From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Jul 28 09:36:49 1995
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Date: Fri, 28 Jul 1995 12:36:08 -0400
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To: hackers@freebsd.org
From: dennis@et.htp.com (dennis)
Subject: Re: 
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>> Oh great.  One of UNIX's worst abortions, taken to extremes (can you
>> say "ioctl() is a bogus ``API'' for controlling behavior?"  I thought
>> so)..
>
>You are mistaken.  Everthing is *not* an ioctl.  It instead resembles
>something like the proc filesystem.  Do you think *that* is an
>abortion?
>
UNIX is an abortion. All O/Ss are abortions. There is no clean way to design an
O/S to do everything, which is exactly what everyone using a particular O/S
wants
it to do. The wost thing is if you have to redesign the internal structures
every time something
new comes along. ioctls() allow you to design  portable interfaces without
having to change the O/S.

db