On 8/24/20 10:32 AM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>
> Mu memory may be failing ne after almost half a century, but I recall
> that the original Unix, way back in the early 70's,
> even directories could be read as files. Not that there was
> some hidden trickery making them into files; instead there were
> conventions how files could be treated as directories.
>

I had to look up Plan 9, and in doing so, I found that "Everything is a
file" has its own wikipedia page. It says, "But file descriptors are also
created for things like anonymous pipes and network sockets via different
methods. Therefore a more accurate description of this feature is
Everything is a file descriptor."

And the page for File descriptor says, "In Unix-like systems, file
descriptors can refer to any Unix file type named in a file system. As
well as regular files, this includes directories, block and character
devices (also called "special files")"

fsmithred