Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ukma!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Message-ID: <10364@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 5 Jun 89 12:09:20 GMT
References: <106326@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4315@ficc.uu.net> <338@arc.UUCP> <10332@smoke.BRL.MIL> <4346@ficc.uu.net> <10343@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1232@pkmab.se> <10357@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1989Jun3.004854.18111@light.uucp>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 11

In article <1989Jun3.004854.18111@light.uucp> bvs@light.UUCP (Bakul Shah) writes:
>	obj_open(cwd, "src/os", ...)
>In effect the concept of `current directory' disappears ...

Yup, you got it.  Using a null "existing handle" argument gets a local
top-level handle.  If you think how this can be implemented (handle is
a kernel data pointer), then consider how the kernel implementation of
"pathname" parsing for obj_open (which I think of as "subopen") can
take advantage of the uniformity, you'll see some of the other potential
advantages.  This seems to nicely accommodate portals, remote object
access, and so forth.