New (GNU) kernels--what I think

[Brandon S. Allbery]

As quoted from <445 at lexicon.com> by rk at lexicon.com (Bob Kukura):
+---------------
| One approach to this would be to replace the argv mechanism with some
| sort of interactive scheme.  A shell would start up an application as
| soon as its command name was successfully completed, and then would
| communicate with the application using some protocol to determine the
| namespace from which completion alternatives for each argument come,
| and to validate the actual arguments as they are entered.  Finally,
| when all the arguments are negotiated, the shell would tell the
| application to go do its thing.  Of course, there would also have to
| be a non-interactive method of invoking all commands.  Maybe a single
| command-line option would be reserved for all commands that would
| cause them to enter this interactive protocol to get their arguments.
+---------------

Someone pointed out that this requires the process to start before I/O
redirection has been completed.  True enough, but --

STREAMS, and at least one implementation of sockets (sorry, I don't know
enough to know whether this is common -- although the fact that nobody has
mentioned it seems to imply that it's not), has the ability to pass a file
descriptor between processes.  Why can't the interaction take place on an
out-of-the-way fd, then the last step pass the redirection fd's down the
socket/STREAM which the shell uses to talk to the program?

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc	     allbery at ncoast.org
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