I don't think I'd call it stupid, I can see your point.  I'm interested to
know what you had in mind for replacing it.  Would the kernel just keep the
"paths" in a table or some similar mechanism?  This would seem to eliminate
the need to check for stale files and whatnot.  Would this port easily?  I
would think so since it would be internal to the kernel but I've never had
the fine experience of porting this type of stuff to another architecture.

-Scott

> 
> I'm going to be mildly heretical here...why does AF_LOCAL still have
> anything to do with the filesystem?  I can't see any reason to continue
> to have any relationship between AF_LOCAL addresses and anything in any
> filesystem except for the sake of compatability with the past mistake
> of doing so in the first place.  (Mind you, I think I can understand
> why AF_LOCAL was done that way then, but I do consider it a mistake and
> don't see any reason to perpetuate it.)
> 
> Am I being stupid somehow, or is there really no reason beyond backward
> compatability?
>