UNIX Futures

[Griff Smith]

> In article <1199 at ulysses.UUCP> ggs at ulysses.UUCP (Griff Smith) writes:
> 
> > It's also nice to be able to stop things some times...
> > I also like having the
> > option of stopping a suspected run-away process instead of blowing it
> > out of the water.  Would you drive a car without brakes?
> 
> The reason Dennis Ritchie qualifies as a genius is because when we say
> "it sure would be nice to..." to him, he responds "yup, sure would"
> instead of "hey, yeah, I'll go hack it in."
> 
> DISCLAIMER:  I've never met DMR;  I'm just making a point here.  Read his
> paper on streams to hear in his own words how incredibly hard it is to
> come up with a simple unifying concept instead of a bunch of hacks like BSD.
> -- 
> 
> 	Geoff Kuenning
> 	{hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff

One comment in my defense: job control works in Eighth edition UNIX
(V8).  I don't know whether this is an oversight by the system impurity
hit squad or a conscious effort to perserve an occasionally useful
feature.

I still think a tool for stopping processes is valuable; it is not
really necessary that it also be usable as a terminal context switcher,
but one convenient implementation has that side effect.
-- 

Griff Smith	AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill
Phone:		(201) 582-7736
Internet:	ggs at ulysses.uucp
UUCP:		ulysses!ggs  ( {allegra|ihnp4}!ulysses!ggs )