programmatic devices

[Andrew Hume]

a very similar scheme has existed for at least a couple of years
in research unix; it was first done by dave presotto and dennis
ritchie under the (rough) label 'connection server'.
most of what you describe can be done more simply by a mounted stream,
which is part of SVR4.

the generalization of this, implementing files as processes,
has a longer history: greg rose investigated this for a phd
thesis around 1979 at UNSW in australia. i am sure
others have also looked at this before.