From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <7bf536fa6ce3ddbe60a1a94c026d6f7e@mightycheese.com> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] A proposal regarding # in bind From: "rob pike, esq." In-Reply-To: <20030224204958.157fccfe.martin@mca-ltd.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 10:36:42 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 709f0eae-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 # file names were just a hack to get started - literally to get started. They were a place holder until a better idea came along. None has. # was never considered a great idea; I just needed some way to name an unnamed resource. I deliberately chose # as the character because it's the comment character in the shell and therefore is really irritating to use. Your proposal is interesting but doesn't solve the bootstrap problem. How would /proto get mounted? You see, the thing about # names is that they're really not in the name space, and that comes in handy when booting or creating a name space from scratch, such as in listen. Since a program can't name the proto driver, how does one establish a connection to it? I'm sure there's a way; I just wonder what your plan is. One thing I like about your proposal is that it would make it easier to import devices from remote machines. One thing I don't like about your proposal is that it would make it easier to import devices from remote machines. > This all seems so obvious, that I can't understand why it hasn't always > been done this way! Many years of thinking, especially when given the ideas made possible by the incomplete early implementations, can make hard things obvious. -rob