Standards Update, IEEE 1003.4: Real-time Extensions

[Chip Salzenberg]

Submitted-by: chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg)

According to brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein):
>On the contrary: Given file descriptors, the filesystem is an almost
>useless abstraction.

Characterizing the Unix filesystem as "almost useless" is, frankly,
hogwash.  A hierarchical filesystem with mount points is a simple, yet
powerful, organizational tool.

To get back to the original point of this thread, one of my primary
complaints about the System V IPC facilities is that they all live in
a flat namespace.  There is no way for me to create a subdirectory for
my application, with naturally named IPCs within that directory.  Such
hierarchical division is "almost useless?"  Hardly.

>Many of us are convinced that open() and rename() and unlink() and so on
>are an extremely poor match for unreliable or dynamic or remote I/O.

Given Unix, where devices -- even those with removable media -- are
accessed through the filesystem, I can see no reason whatsoever to
treat network connections and other IPC facilities differently.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT     <chip at tct.uucp>, <uunet!pdn!tct!chip>

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 141