buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) (08/09/89)
In the book "Life with Unix", p42, a passing mention is made of design mistakes in Unix: And yes, they made some design mistakes. In fact, a lot of UNIX is the result of evolution. Things that did not work out were removed (e.g., multiplexed files) or changed (e.g., file name lengths). [...] The lack of mistakes in UNIX is as much due to divine understanding as it is to its chance to evolve without carrying around the baggage of those old mistakes. What were "multiplexed files" and why were they a mistake? Are there any other things that were simply removed as mistakes in early versions of which a recent student of Unix might not have heard? [The only "multiplexed" objects in a version of Unix of which I know are AIX/RT multiplexed devices, which generate a device name on the fly for subdevices, such as virtual terminals.] -- A. Lester Buck ...!texbell!moray!siswat!buck