HACKER Q&A
📣 InterNautic

What is your oppinion on Plan9 making more (than Unix) stuff files?


Is something not fitting that model? Are there any costs that are too big in some cases? Is some too much mind boggling than needed?


  👤 johndoe0815 Accepted Answer ✓
It's pretty universal and some of the features not implemented by files in traditional Unix (e.g. network connections, remote devices) work well in Plan 9. Though I think "everything is a file" is a misnomer in the context of Plan 9 - rather, everything is a name in a system of namespaces.

Interesting related paper which also gives some cases for which names don't work too well (one example is shared memory): http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/names