A variant of the streams idea

[Doug Gwyn <gwyn>]

> I would like to see the whole stream mechanism generalized so that I
> could push a stream module in front of \any/ file, not just a tty file.

Several of us have discussed this idea before.
It comes down to the fact that there really are
significant differences between random-access
(disk) files and sequential (communication)
files.  To force random files into the stream
model would require sacrificing some of their
desirable properties (seekability, sharability,
speed), alas.

Nice try, though.