Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:7781 comp.unix.wizards:9600 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!newcomb From: newcomb@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Newcomb) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards Subject: /dev/stdin Message-ID: <4096@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> Date: 26 Jun 88 13:51:58 GMT Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu Reply-To: newcomb@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Newcomb) Distribution: na Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 30 After reading all the flap about /dev/stdin (and its omission from BSD UNIX), I thought a while about the problem. First, is /dev/stdin supposed to be just a link of sorts to one's TTY input? I can't think of anything else it should reference, except perhaps fd0 in a shell script (and here, admittedly, my case is worthless). If you want to do something like: egrep 'Lo\! The Hounds of Hell eat Puppy Chow\!' `cat files /dev/stdin`' then would not /dev/stdin be referring to TTY input? I should think that it would always be used on command lines where stdin is not being redirected; I don't know of too many programs that let you get away with something like this: cat /dev/stdin < whangdoodle ; Send stdin and 'whangdoodle' to stdout (Would /dev/stdin in this case be referring to 'whangdoodle', since it's now standard input...?) So, if all you want is the TTY input, why not use /dev/tty? It's worked beautifully in all the cases I've tried. So, what am I missing? Can anybody come up with a case where /dev/stdin would NOT be /dev/tty, besides shell scripts? (I already know this won't work for scripts run from a shell whose input has been redirected.) In a C program, also, you can just do an fdopen(3) on descriptor 0 (and that ALWAYS works). PLEASE send comments through E-MAIL!!!! I promise I'll summarize in a week or so. Many thanks. Tom Newcomb | WEST, v. West is what wabbits do when they newcomb@cory.Berkeley.EDU | get tired of wunning awound.