(was slashes, now NFS devices)

[The Grey Wolf]

<DSR91=G at xds13.ferranti.com> by peter at ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
& In article <468 at appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> lm at slovax.Eng.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy) writes:
& > Nobody, including RFS, has ever come up with networked devices in any
& > sort of general fashion.
& 
& Intel's OpenNET seems to do a pretty good job of it. Consider (bridge is
& running System V/386, xds13 is running Xenix/286):
& 
& % net name
& //xds13
& % stty -a < //bridge/dev/console

#if (the net name "directory" is not freely configurable)
AAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!  NONONONONONONONONO!  Tell me that this is
not becoming COMMON!  I think I'd go quietly quite mad (sane?) were that
the case!

The "//" notation can have some bad effects if your program has a tendency
to expand ~$user/bin (or however you have home directory expansion, tilde
just seems to be the most common), especially if $user == "root".

Why don't they just standardise on /..., or /net, or allow arbitrary mount
points...?

The Apollo workstations use this scheme; and some things break there, too.

"So don't write your programs like that!"

That's a cop-out. "//" is an inherently bad design.

#else
As long as it's configurable that's not bad.
#endif

& -- 
& Peter da Silva.  `-_-'  peter at ferranti.com
& +1 713 274 5180.  'U`  "Have you hugged your wolf today?"


-- 
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