Re: Not a typewriter

Jonathan Lundell
2001-05-10T23:52:57Z

At 7:20 PM -0400 2001-05-10, Hacksaw wrote:
> >I disagree. "Not a typewriter" is part of Unix tradition, and ought to be
>>retained as a historical reference. It's also an opportunity for "the
>>uninitiated" to learn a little more and move a little closer to becoming "the
>>initiated."
>
>Heaven help us when tradition is more important than clarity.
>
>Typewriter has always been wrong. I'd agree that "Not a teletypewriter" would
>suffice.
>
>On the other hand "Inappropriate ioctl for device" is also not very clear.
>
>I'd like to see "Not a serial or character device" or "Not a serial device" if
>that's more appropriate. Something like that...

ENOTTY is used by several non-serial devices (or file systems) to
object to an unrecognized ioctl command. There's also ENOIOCTLCMD
(apparently supposed to be a non-user errno, but i don't see where it
gets changed to something else) and EINVAL. I'm not sure what the
rationale is for choosing among them; perhaps someone would elucidate?
--
/Jonathan Lundell.