A variant of the streams idea

[David Herron, NPR Lover]

In article <964 at brl-tgr.ARPA> gwyn at brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) writes:
>> I would like to see the whole stream mechanism generalized so that I
>> could push a stream module in front of \any/ file, not just a tty file.
>
>Several of us have discussed this idea before.
> ...
>     To force random files into the stream
>model would require sacrificing some of their
>desirable properties (seekability, sharability,
>speed), alas.
>
>Nice try, though.

Why do you lose "seekability"?  Pushing a protocol on top of a file
potentially brings in a whole set of ioctl()'s that can be performed.
So lseek() becomes ioctl(fd, FLSEEK, offset) or some such.  Other
operations can be performed with similar ioctl()'s.

Right?

Or am I missing something?

-- 
David Herron,  cbosgd!ukma!david, david at UKMA.BITNET.

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.