From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Sun,  4 Jan 2009 16:41:56 -0800
From: "Roman V. Shaposhnik" <rvs@sun.com>
In-reply-to: <dd6fe68a0901032301m226e9505ue8c4b47b2a6fab81@mail.gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Message-id: <1231116116.11463.287.camel@goose.sun.com>
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	<8ccc8ba40901031421l430abd92je774b81862b1fb31@mail.gmail.com>
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	<dd6fe68a0901032301m226e9505ue8c4b47b2a6fab81@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] directly opening Plan9 devices
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 7910bde0-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

On Sat, 2009-01-03 at 23:01 -0800, Russ Cox wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 9:12 PM, Roman V. Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:
> > [complaint about # names]

Please let me know what kind of keywords or emoticons I am supposed
to include in my emails to indicate that they are *not* complaints,
but rather invitations for a discussion.

> No one has yet offered a working, cleaner idea.

Not to even suggest a 100% cleanliness, but simply
as a matter of incremental improvements here's one
simple idea.

Wouldn't the approach of treating #X as channels
instead of full fledged parallel namespace be at least
somewhat cleaner than what we have today? If the only
thing that any of the "#X" permitted was to issue a
mount/bind syscall, it would, IMHO, simplify and
clean at least the following areas:
    1.1. the need for less than ideal special case in
         namec():
            switch(name[0]){
            case '#':
         Not that we would get rid of it 100%, but it seems
         much more appropriate in bindmount()
    1.2. the need for an implicit and poorly documented
         and thus confusing ->attach in namec():
             switch(name[0]){
             case '#':
             .....
                     c = devtab[t]->attach(up->genbuf+n);
    1.3. an ability of userspace applications to bypass
         the venerable namespace mechanics

The above seems like a net gain, doesn't it?

Thanks,
Roman.