On Tue, 25 May 2004 12:25:42 +1000, matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au> wrote:
> 
> 
>    Would we, then, also get /dev/pts/<number> for name <-> pty mapping?
>    That's one of the few things I like better about Linux than BSD...
>    There are only so many /dev/ttyXY's you can use, and it looks quite
>    obnoxious in 'w' or 'who' compared to Linux, where you just see
>    'pts/whatever'. Of course, I don't claim to know what the official
>    stance on any of this is, so I'm just tossing out an opinion.
> 
> 
> why is this an issue?  we're not short of pty's by a long short.  my
> system has 186 with only three "X" letters used (p, q & r.)  if you
> push those to [s-zP-Z] that gives you a total of 1364 ptys.
> 
> i don't see why the output of 'w' is matters.
> 

it isn't really an issue... I was just tossing out an opinion, as I
said. The output of w doesn't matter at all - as you said, there are
enough ptys as we use them now. I simply think pts/<number> looks
better than tty<x><y>. But if it's more work than is necessary to do
that than to just introduce "unix98 ptys" (should we start calling
them posix2001 ptys?), then it isn't, by any means, necessary.

-Sean