[TUHS] 8th Edition and /dev/stdio

Paul Ruizendaal pnr at planet.nl
Mon Apr 20 23:59:58 AEST 2020


Whilst spelunking in the V8 source code I came across this dozen lines:
http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/v8unix/artifact/2782d26fa2930724?ln=174,187

It implements the /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout and /dev/stderr devices (the variable ‘file_no’ in above code snippet is the constant 40, which is the major number of these devices). It would seem that this handful of lines could have been in Unix as early as 4th Edition — but they weren’t. Maybe it was not seen as useful.

As far as I can tell this bit of code originates in 8th Edition, with no earlier precursors. It does not seem to be in its man pages.

Who added this neat little innovation?




More information about the TUHS mailing list