generic I/O

[kai@gnukai.com (Kai Meyer)]

Are there existing generic block device I/O operations available 
already? I am familiar with constructing and submitting 'struct bio's, 
but what I'd like to do would be greatly simplified if there was an 
existing I/O interface similar to the posix 'read' and 'write' 
functions. If they don't exist, I would probably end up writing 
functions like:
int blk_read(struct block_device *bdev, void *buffer, off_t length);
int blk_write(struct block_device *bdev, void *buffer, off_t length);

Pros and cons to this sort of approach?

-Kai Meyer