Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!apple!zorba!dtynan
From: karl@MorningStar.Com (Karl Fox)
Newsgroups: comp.unix
Subject: Re: An idea probably discarded many times
Message-ID: <3520@zorba.Tynan.COM>
Date: 26 Nov 89 20:06:11 GMT
References: <3481@zorba.Tynan.COM> <3495@zorba.Tynan.COM>
Sender: dtynan@zorba.Tynan.COM
Reply-To: uunet!MorningStar.Com!karl (Karl Fox)
Organization: Morning Star Technologies
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Approved: dtynan@zorba.Tynan.COM
In-Reply-To: larry@macom1.UUCP's message of 14 Oct 89 22:35:14 GMT

In article <3495@zorba.Tynan.COM> larry@macom1.UUCP (Larry Taborek) writes:

   > why aren't processes treated the same way?  I think it would be a nice
   > addition to Unix to have a virtual '/proc' directory mounted in the file
   > system.

   I'm no wizard Roger but it seems to me that updating the process
   table in memory would be alot faster then the system calls needed
   to create an entry in the file system and directory needed only
   to post some inode information that is already available in the
   process tables. (whew!)

   ie, your imposing alot of overhead for nothing.


It doesn't have to work this way.  Nothing needs to work differently until
the ``ls /proc'' does a read() from the special /proc directory (is it even
a directory?).  The read() system call could then switch out to code that
examines the proc table and feeds appropriate bytes back to the caller.
--
Karl Fox, Morning Star Technologies               karl@MorningStar.COM
                  No disclaimer needed -- RTFM for Usenet.