> Wouldn't ioctl support for /proc files be more logical?
You've got my vote for that. Its fine for a human to browse through /proc,
but programs shouldn't have to rely on the format of /proc file entries to
work properly - for the simple reason that its WASTEFUL to convert binary
information to text just to convert the text back to binary in order to
use it, not to mention any file descriptors opened in the process.
As an example consider the infamous 'top' utility. It eats 3% of the
CPU to display a subset (whatever fits on screen) of 44 processes. This is
on a Pentium Pro 200. A similar program on HP-UX (a much slower OS
according to all the benchmarks) never exceeds 1% - and thats with 350
processes.
Some people out there have 4 way 200Mhz Pentium Pros - but I have one
CPU with 6 hungry programmers hogging every valuable cycle - and I cant
afford to waste any of it.
Why not develop a system call for obtaining process info? The same
goes for IO. Wouldn't it be nice to have a STANDARD api for querrying all
devices that do IO? Imagine all the utilities that could be written to
take advantage of information like this?
Regards,
Y.