NOT!

> c1d6s0 is a much clearer device name than sd0a

This is a joke, right?   Actually, it sounds like you're serious,
which just goes to prove that this is another case of baby duck
syndrome - we like what we learned on.

> there's no special magic
> for root or swap partitions, which makes sense; why have a weird special
> case when you don't need it?

What's the weird special case?  What am I missing here?  The only
difference that I can see from your example is that partitions are
lettered instead of numbered, which means you don't have to add a
special character to seperate the disk number from the partition
number.  Maybe the C partition is the special case you're referring
to?

Why can't you configure swap on multiple partitions on the same drive?
Certainly that's been possible with historical versions of BSD.
Hell, NetBSD theoretically lets you create multiple swap files on the
same filesystem if that turns you on.

This would be another great topic for the netbsd-discuss mailing
list...

			       _MelloN_
--
Ted Lemon							 mellon@vix.com
+1 415 477 5045

Fight to preserve your freedom to program: Join the League for
Programming Freedom!   For info, contact lpf@uunet.uu.net.