Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Message-ID: <13750@ncoast.ORG>
Date: 13 Jun 89 23:16:58 GMT
References: <106326@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4315@ficc.uu.net> <338@arc.UUCP> <40062@cmcl2.NYU.EDU> <4438@ficc.uu.net> <190@dg.dg.com>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.unix.wizards
Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh
Lines: 52

As quoted from <190@dg.dg.com> by rec@dg.dg.com (Robert Cousins):
+---------------
| In article <4438@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
| >This is an intriguing idea. I, myself, would prefer to make '@' by itself
| >at the beginning of a file name a special token. This solves the problem
| >of files beginning with @ in /tmp...
+---------------

Gag me with a Worknet.  Altos's network scheme uses @ as a magic character
(a super-root, corresponding roughly to // in Apollo networking).  I've
found it to be something of a pain.

I would suggest something like a file system switch-accessible method:
mount a "filesystem" which accesses file descriptors, or "default" devices,
or etc.

+---------------
| AOS/VS from Data General has the concept of default files.  These files
| being with the character @ and are "special."  Whenever a program attempts
| to open @output, the OS converts this file name to an already established
| file name (the terminal by default).  However, the value of @output can
| be changed at the CLI (shell) level.  This serves a function similar to
| a cross between environment variables and I/O redirection.  It is, however,
| VERY useful for many tasks.
+---------------

//GO.SYSIN DD *

Yuck.  One small step backwards for IBM, one giant leap backwards for
operating systems.

+---------------
| Perhaps a better solution would be to use some special character to 
| signal a non-filesystem request to be passed to a another task.  THis
| would allow special filesystems to be implemented as dedicated tasks
| and then used transparently.  The task would simply initialize and then
+---------------

I still like the FSS.  It would, of course, be nice if the FSS entries
could be implemented as separate processes, and have the FSS be dynamically
modifiable; then you could "advertize" (i.e. put into the FSS) a new
"filesystem" type, whether it be a real filesystem, /proc, or whatever, and
access it as part of the directory tree.

Isn't Mach supposed to be able to do this to some extent?

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