Re: IDEA: Process-Special files

Tim Smith (tzs@tzs.net)
Tue, 20 Oct 1998 01:31:40 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, 19 Oct 1998, Tim Hockin wrote:
> What I am thinking is what I have tentatively called " process-special "
> files.
>
> This is a file that, when open()ed for read (O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, etc) would
> be executed as a binary or script, and the output would be substituted for
> the file.
...
> Has anyone ever thought about something like this? Does it sound like
> something that would be worthwhile?

In my less lucid moments, I've thought of something even weirder...why
have files at all? Why not make every so-called file really be a process?
When you try to "open" a "file", you really get some sort of IPC connection
to a process that supplies the data. It sure makes disk configuration
easier: just partition everything as swap! :-)

--Tim Smith

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