At Fri, 8 Apr 2022 17:34:27 -0600, Andrew Warkentin wrote: Subject: Re: [TUHS] Interesting commentary on Unix from Multicians. > > I think it's useful to have both I/O and memory views for files. > Things like commands that work equally well whether stdout is a disk > file or something like a pipe wouldn't work so well in a system where > disk files can only be accessed through a memory-like interface. > However, I guess the I/O interface could just be implemented with > library functions rather than real I/O syscalls for disk-like files. I/O is good for I/O of course (e.g. to devices, like terminals and printers and such), and if you can "attach" that I/O to a segment, or to another program's I/O, all the better: https://multicians.org/myths.html#nofile (One big complication forced by hardware limitations of the day was rather limited file (i.e. segment) size, and thus Multics developers invented multi-segment files, and as mentioned in that link, stream access to them was often through the I/O mechanism, but of course this was a simulation done by copying (I think) data from a mapped segment of the file to a buffer in a heap segment.) -- Greg A. Woods Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack Planix, Inc. Avoncote Farms