Re: [9fans] ideas for helpful system io functions

[Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com>]

On Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:27:02 EST erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>  wrote:
> > To be precise, both fds have their own pointer (or offset)
> > and reading N bytes from some offset O must return the same
> > bytes.
>
> wrong.  /dev/random is my example.

You cut out the bit about buffering where I explained what I
meant.  As I said, those are the semantics I would choose so
by definition it is not "wrong"! Though it may not do what
you expect.  As a matter of fact I do see a use case for
/dev/random for getting repeatable random numbers! If you
want an independet stream of random numbers, just open
/dev/random again (or dup()), and not use fdfork().