Extending the UNIX pathname syntax

[jack at boring.UUCP]

Something like /dev/net/blablabla is something that I've wanted
to implement for a long long time now, only I haven't found
the time yet.
The things you can do with this are numerous :
- more-or-less transparent access to files on other machines.
- magtape labeling (as stated in the previous article).
- using RSX-11(yucc), MS-DOS(Yucc), RT-11(WAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!) or
  whatever filesystems under unix.
- A 'shell device' (something like fd=open("/dev/sh/ls -l",0).
- And, of course, combinations of the above. Think of
  /dev/net/othermachine/dev/sh/ls -l

The implementation is also quite straightforward:
'open' gets a third parameter (the rest of the string after the
device name), and returns a pseudo-inumber, and all the other
routines are passed this inumber (if you want to be able to
do seeks and stats on these 'funny' files, you need some more
stuff, but nothing difficult).

Has anyone implemented something like this already? Anyone feels
like doing so? Any comments?
-- 
	Jack Jansen, {decvax|philabs|seismo}!mcvax!jack
	The shell is my oyster.