On 2008-10-02, at 09:52, Tony Finch wrote:
On Thu, 2 Oct 2008, Peter da Silva wrote:
I would suggest something that lets you say something like
"cat file >
/dev/win/anon//mode=text/geometry=80x24+30+30/title=filename/
close=retain"
And while you're fixing stuff, "/dev/tcp/anon//port=80/
host=www.google.com/"
would be spiffy.
And, for that matter, replace ioctls with "touch /dev/tty//
speed=9600/..."
I don't think it makes sense to embed information in the pathname
that can
change dynamically.
The intent was that the special case // sequence (which is actually
in POSIX, though I don't think anyone implemented anything using it
in any post-POSIX environments, it was included to support things
like the OpenNet super-root), after a special file, indicated a non-
enumerable and non-saved name. This would just specify initial
conditions. To change the status afterwards you would use /dev/fd/
N//... or open /dev/fd/N/control and write a string (as in Plan 9).
This is to avert the inherent race condition if the Plan 9 control
stream mechanism was used for things like windows without the Plan 9
bind() call. AmigaDOS used a similar mechanism and it was
tremendously useful to be able to open "con:80/24/..." (I don't
recall the exact syntax now) and I always thought this was more UNIXy
than the Plan 9 approach.
