From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!mo@Lbl-Unix
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: table() system call
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.4997
Posted: Fri Dec 31 01:12:31 1982
Received: Sat Jan  1 04:22:55 1983

From: mo at Lbl-Unix (Mike O'Dell [system])
Date: 30 Dec 1982 16:43:18-PST
Mike O'Brien's mention of the Harvard table() call is a good idea, but
going through a device driver has a major advantage worth mentioning.
If access to the tables is embedded in the filesystem, then you could
have a "ps" or "iostat" which could look at another machine, given a distributed
filesystem.  In places with several machines, this would certainly
be useful.

In a larger sense, this is a effort to divorce programs
from intimate knowledge of the kernel.  This is not only good, but should
be pushed toward programs not having particular knowledge of which machine
they are running upon.  

	-Mike