On Thu, 10 May 2001, Greywolf wrote:

: # >I know, it's all opinion, but the /dev/pts/NNN or
: # > /dev/pty/NNN notation just really makes me cringe.  There must be a way
: # > to hit a happy medium in there somewhere.

: # You can't really like having a bazillion tty and pty devices all
: # cluttered into one directory with all your other devices, can you?  What
: # a horrible mess it creates!  It's like putting everything in "C:\" with
: # no sub-directories!  "Yuck!" is my opinion of the current situation.
:
: When doing a "ls", yeah, it's unwieldy.  But when referencing them (which
: is far more common), it's less painful to do so.

No one cares very much about "ls"-ing a /dev/pts directory.  In fact, it
probably would be very well suited to a dynamic fs, a la FDESC or the like;
it's also amazingly simple to implement.

SVR4's /dev/pts/* mechanism has a LOT of prior art.  We should adopt it,
since inventing a new scheme here is near zero gain for lots of effort
[porting applications to use the brand-new scheme].

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi NetBSD:  Run with it.
-- NetBSD 1.5 now available on CD-ROM  --  http://www.wasabisystems.com/