>I'm sure this idea has come up in the past; many of my ideas are like i'm afraid that directory-with-contents does indeed reappear from time to time. it's not obvious (at least to me) that it ever made a big difference, but it does add ambiguity. a version and configuration system made use of one implementation, so that directory "xyz" might contain the portable source of something, and "xyz/special-variant" might have a modified version or a machine-specific part of the general "xyz" (eg, "console", "console/dgnova", "console/ti990"). there was a bit more to it than that, but in the end on other systems "xyz" was a directory, "xyz/port" had the general version, and other substructure gave the variants. so the directory-with-content didn't really seem to make things simpler.
at the moment in Plan 9, /dev/sdC0/data has the drive's data and /dev/sdC0/ctl shows you its attributes and writes control them, and ls /dev/sdC0 shows you ctl, data and others. /dev/sdC0 refers to that set (as distinct from the data, which is in "data"). this seems clear and adequate. i'd have said it was a simpler model.
