[comp.unix.xenix] undocumented ioctl

ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (03/14/89)

Browsing through /usr/include/sys/* in search of clock tick values, I
stumbled on a number of parameters for ioctl() calls pertaining to disk
format operations. Are these documented anywhere? If so, where? If not,
why are they not documented?

I have a version of tar that runs under **IX and MSDOS, and one feature
that I would like to add is the ability to detect unformatted disks and
format them on the fly. While this could be done with a system() call,
I'd like to do something a bit more elegant (and a bit faster).