>> one disadvantage of the library approach in the unix environment is that >> you're once again back having to know which `access method' to use, >> to pass the file descriptor or handle to the right library. >> i might easily have misunderstood something though.
> [reasonable explanation deleted] > I bet they do something along these lines. yes, i supposed it could be something along those lines but i didn't make my point clear. if it is along those lines, it breaks something that even sockets didn't break. at the moment, i get a file descriptor that i can pass to anything that does read and write. now i've got something that i can only mmap, and even the mmap refers to a non-trivial data structure shared with the kernel, and the recipient of the file descriptor must invoke special calls in a special library (ie, the `access method'). i suppose you could call it TCAM
