On Wednesday 17 of October 2012 06:40:45 ron minnich wrote: > get to the part about why it's so great that pipe is a system call, > not a device. > > This is the sort of back-and-forth that reminds me why I can't quite > give up on plan 9 ... > > http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/everything_is_file.html > > "Do we create pipes by opening /dev/pipe? No. " > > and > > "Yes, some old-timers could argue that original UNIX didn't have sockets, > and that the BSD interface is ugly and an abomination and that it _should_ > have been a namespace thing, but that argument falls flat on its face when > you realize that the "pipe()" system call _was_ in original UNIX, and has > all the same issues." > > ah well. It seems that the guy who wrote pipe() might not agree that > he does not know much about Unix ... but so it goes.
a technical and organizational problem: back then Linux' /dev consisted of special files held on drive, its MAJOR/MINOR schema* getting dangerously cramped. those days Linux' /dev is usually mounted at boot and maintained by kernel, somewhat alike /proc; adding some more entries probably isn't that much of a problem. -- dexen deVries [[[↓][→]]] * MAJOR/MINOR being an unmountable namespace is quite ironic.
