Suggested dual human/binary interface for proc/devfs

From: Manuel Estrada (ranty@soon.com)
Date: Tue Apr 04 2000 - 13:34:08 EST


        Hello, I am no kernel expert, but for some time an idea has
been floating in my mind since I read someone criticizing proc for
being human readable and time consuming to read by top or any other
program.

        Well, what about having a human interface for humans and a
binary interface for programs, using some flag to to open (2) to
select it, something which wouldn't have a meaning within those files,
the perfect one would be something like O_BINARY, which also wouldn't
have any meaning otherwise, but that one doesn't exist. Then maybe
O_LARGEFILE, O_SYNC, O_TRUNC, O_APPEND... Well, I don't realy know if
this are good candidates.

        And also, not all files would need the dual interface, the
opening program should know if a certain file supported it and also
the format of the interface.

        Just for the record, I am not trying to push this into 2.4
kernels or anything, I just had an idea and wanted to share it, just
in case it was good.

        Thanks for a great job

                Ranty

-------------------------------------------------
        Manuel Estrada

        Ranty@atdot.org
-------------------------------------------------

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