>>> I'm going to be mildly heretical here...why does AF_LOCAL still have
>>> anything to do with the filesystem?  [...]
>>> Am I being stupid somehow, or is there really no reason beyond
>>> backward compatability?
>
>> I don't think I'd call it stupid, I can see your point.
>
>Actually, since I wrote that, one thing came to mind: permissions.  I'm
>not sure whether the permission bits on a socket have any semantics,
>but those on the directories leading up to it definitely do.

i think that's *exactly* what they had in mind.  as for the bits on
the socket itself, i think that traditionally they didn't matter, but
they do now.

>Whether there is reason enough to preserve the filesystem semantics is
>debatable.  (Vide infra, too.)

having it in the filesystem is not that much of a problem, and you get
arbitrary permissions control for free?  sounds good to me.

-- 
|-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----|
codewarrior@daemon.org             * "ah!  i see you have the internet
twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown)                that goes *ping*!"
andrew@crossbar.com       * "information is power -- share the wealth."