Subject: Re: Why is ifconfig.ae0 better than hostname.ae0?
To: 'BSD Users' <current-users@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Graham, James <James.Graham@Schwab.COM>
List: current-users
Date: 04/15/1997 11:33:32
For Andrew Brown, who wanted to know:
# isn't netstart supposed to be able to read ifconfig.### files anyway?
# doesn't it implicitly know how to parse the file?

netstart only reads them in as much as they contain lines to be tossed
directly to ifconfig; in fact, if we wanted to, we could just make the
ifconfig.* files contain the full command string, including the
"ifconfig"
and have netstart just sh the files, but then it would be possible for
ifconfig.le0 to really be an ifconfig for ie2 or whatever.

As far as parsing goes, no, there is no parsing going on -- at
least not at this point.  It's just snarfed and passed to ifconfig.
The fact that there was a $af, $addr, $other_options kind of
layout might have been due to some other program wanting
such a structure, but the idea is that you can say

for if in le0 le1 le2; do {
	ifconfig $if `cat /etc/ifconfig.$if`
} done

...I think.

			--*greywolf;
--

WE ARE MICROSOFT OF BORG.
OPENNESS IS FUTILE.  UNIX IS IRRELEVANT.
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.