From: jcburt@gatsibm.larc.nasa.gov () Subject: Re: Why not change "tty" to "con" or "cty"? Date: 10 May 1993 17:39:16 GMT
In article <1993May10.165042.8271@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> mancus@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov (Keith Mancus) writes:
>In article <C6Gs60.Brv@boulder.parcplace.com>, imp@boulder.parcplace.com (Warner Losh) writes:
>|> In article <1s38jdINN4b@uwm.edu> rick@ee.uwm.edu (Rick Miller - Linux
>|> Device Registrar) writes:
>|> >With the above method, you'd do a "ps" and you wouldn't know whether you
>|> >were looking at serial ports, pseudo-tty's, or virtual consoles! but if we
>|> >use "tty[c-f][0-f]" it's obvious!
>|>
>|> Hmmm. Well, you could fix ps to print more of the information about
>|> the line that it is attached to. After all, it was written when all
>|> tty's had the prefix /dev/tty. ps on IRIX, for example, list the
>|> entire name of the tty (eg ttyq1).
>
> I like this suggestion. I think that the pty/tty/cua/vty method is
>much cleaner and more intuitive. I really shouldn't have to dig out the
>manuals to check whether [c-f] is serial in, out, or virtual console!
>Much better to have meaningful names, rather than characters.
Wow, what a concept...actually have device names that bear some
relation to what they are...much easier to remember that my
virtual console is /dev/vty01 or /dev/cty01 then to look at the
manual and try to figure out "well, serial ports start at tty00
and go through ttyff, but wait, the virtual console is ttyC0...
now is a /dev/tty?? a modem, a serial port, a virtual console, or
what..."
It should be *very* clear from the name what a particular device does...
the name "tty" was coined at a time when there was no such thing as a virtual
console, or a psuedo-tty or anything of the sort...tty is short for
"Teletype", which was a hardcopy terminal connected to the serial port
of the computer...the hardware has moved far beyond the Teletype terminal,
don't you think its about time the naming scheme moved out of the 1970's ???
Just because BSD or SunOS does something a certain way, doesn't mean Linux
*must* do it that way...
John
jcburt@gatsibm.larc.nasa.gov