Re: file ID redesign proposal

Jeremy Fitzhardinge (jeremy@zip.com.au)
Thu, 27 Nov 1997 00:25:03 +1100

Ingo Molnar wrote:
> everything would be O(1), 'except' old_open() and old_dup()/dup2(). Bad
> idea?

And socket(), accept()... anything else which can return an fd. It
looks pretty ugly.

Put it this way: when Linus changed the bahaviour of select, I was
surprised that anything really noticed, but it had to be changed back
for compatibility. This "lowest next free" behaviour is much more
firmly entrenched. I agree that emulating it sucks as far as
performance goes, but there you are. Allocation and use of pids is
similar...

J