>> Perhaps it would need a new flavour of file descriptor, [...] > Linux has apparently done this: pidfd (file descriptors representing > a process). The idea is that you can pass them to various system > call variants that otherwise take pids, without the risk that the > process has exited in the mean time and the pid re-used.
I've been thinking about something like that myself, starting with AF_PID sockets, then deciding they wouldn't/couldn't work (as think I mentioned in this thread, the socket infrastructure really wants the contents of a socket to be independent of who's accessing it). Personally, I've wanted it as a way to provide an out-of-band channel to userland programs (like a control command channel for various daemons), but...hmm. Feels strange to find an idea I like coming from Linux. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B