SURVEY RESULTS: Should fd 3 be /dev/tty?

Snoopy snoopy at sopwith.UUCP
Fri May 5 13:00:09 AEST 1989


In article <8123 at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> bernsten at phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Dan Bernstein) writes:

|(6) Having an extra file descriptor for ``command input'' would be
|useful if it is redirectable:   I agree completely and would love
|the subsequent simplification in more, awk, make, etc. Under the
|current one-input two-output model, it is simply impossible to
|write a ``standard'' program to interleave two inputs. Changing
|the standard model to two-input two-output is a potentially very
|useful generalization.
|
|(3) v8/v9 already has fd 3 as /dev/tty:   Why? AT&T, if you want
|to make this change, go all the way and accompany stdin, stdout,
|and stderr with cmdin. Don't make a non-redirectable file descriptor
|for what's already in the name space.

Can I insert my pet peeve here?  There is also a need for a standard
auxiliary output.  stderr is often pressed into service for non-error
output.  I claim that this is a bad thing.  It is a pain to scan through
verbose output checking for error messages.  There should be a standard
place to send a 2nd data stream seperate from the error messages.
I run into this problem much more frequently than the case of needing
two input streams.

A second input stream could be useful for other things besides commands,
perhaps call it auxin?

So, how about: stdin, auxin, stdout, stderr, and auxout ?

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