From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200302261332.NAA02827@dircon.co.uk> Subject: Re: [9fans] A proposal regarding # in bind In-Reply-To: from "okamoto@granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp" at "Feb 26, 2003 03:21:49 pm" To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: Digby Tarvin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 13:32:08 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 72e95304-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 More readable kernel device names sounds all very nice, but what I think would be more beneficial is adopting a solution which reduces the number of arbitrary name spaces. It seems to me that the Plan9 name space can be viewed as one process local tree rooted at '/', plus a forest of global trees rooted at '#'. Is there any reason why that could not be cut down (no pun intended) to one local and one global tree. So, for instance, '#c' becomes '#/c' and 'ls #/' provides a listing of available devices? Or perhaps the naming conventiones that should be adopted for the 'global' namespace could be '//c', or even '#c' for syntactic consistency (where the interpretation changes from a root called '#c' to a directory 'c' in the root '#') Of course more readable names could still be used if desired. Or we could even add a new device file called something like 'description' which when read describes the device. The educated administrator's table could then be produced on demand by the simple command: cat '#*/description' (using syntax proposal 3) Regards, DigbyT >I'm wondering why giving a more readable kernel device name is so important. >Those will be used only by whom making decision what kind of devices to give >to some end users. In the Plan 9 environment, there might be only limitted >number of such administrator, and all the others can be 'end users'. >Those well educated administrator can refer a table showing one rune >charachter device name and long one. > >Just a kidding. b^X: > >Kenji -- Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt@acm.org http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk