Re: [RFD w/info-PATCH] device arguments from lookup, partion code

Erik Mouw
2001-05-19T19:38:58Z

On Sat, May 19, 2001 at 10:45:11AM -0700, Aaron Lehmann wrote:
> On Sat, May 19, 2001 at 06:48:19PM +0200, Erik Mouw wrote:
> > One of the fundamentals of Unix is that "everything is a file" and that
> > you can do everything by reading or writing that file.
>
> But /dev/sda/offset=234234,limit=626737537 isn't a file! ls it and see
> if it's there. writing to files that aren't shown in directory listings
> is plain evil. I really don't want to explain why. It's extremely
> messy and unintuitive.
>
> It would be better to do this with a file that does exist, for example
> writing something to /proc/disks/sda/arguments. Then again, I don't
> even think much of dynamic file systems in the first place.

A network socket also isn't a file in a filesystem, you can't do ls on
it, it doesn't even exist until you create one, but still you use it as
a file by reading and writing it. I don't see any difference in the way
you create /dev/sda/offset=234234,limit=626737537 by just using it.

Erik

--
J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems,
Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-15-2783635 Fax: +31-15-2781843 Email: J.A.K.Mouw@its.tudelft.nl
WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/