Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: is this wise?
Keywords: /dev/stdin, /dev/hosts
Message-ID: <1563@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 4 May 89 08:46:15 GMT
References: <378@chessene.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 19

>There. Isn't that much nicer than sockets?

You haven't given us enough information to answer your question.  I have
no idea how "open" is to perform the appropriate TCP operations, given
that path.

If the ability to translate "uunet.uu.net" into an Internet address is
buried in the kernel, resolver and all, then no, it's not nicer than
sockets.  (If you have to manually construct the directory hierarchy,
rather than it automagically coming from the current host
database/server, it's *definitely* not nicer than sockets.)

If it's done outside the kernel, well, it has some nice properties
(although why is it "79" and not "finger"?).  Asking whether it's "nicer
than sockets" isn't necessarily appropriate; the question is whether
it's nicer than "socket"+"connect", since that's all you've replaced. 
If you want your mechanism to be compared with sockets, you'll have to
provide replacements for other mechanisms in sockets, such as "bind",
"accept" (newly-spawned descriptor for the connection and all), etc..