[geeks] ps, top, etc.

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 @ 09:02 +0200, Michael-John Turner said:

> On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 12:53:14AM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > /proc originated in Plan 9, and then was adopted by Linux.
> 
> According to all the references I can find, /proc was first implemented by
> Tom J. Killian in V8. It's documented in "Processes as Files", USENIX
> Summer Conference Proceedings, June 1984. Two Plan 9-related articles seem
> to support this:
> http://202.179.135.4/data/DDJ/articles/1991/9101/9101b/9101b.htm
> http://cm.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/names.html

Tom Duff says you are wrong. Yesterday I was reading his pages and he says
Plan 9 invented /proc.

Also, your own references above shed some light on that:

	An example of a local service is the "process file system," which
	permits examination and debugging of executing processes through a
	file-oriented interface. It is related to Killian's process file
	system but its differences exemplify the way that Plan 9 services
	are constructed.

	...(talks about /proc/<PID>/<files>)

	That file is closely related to the files in Killian's process file
	system, but unlike Killian's, Plan 9's /proc implements other
	functions through other files, rather than through peculiar
	operations applied to a single file.

That indicates that the idea came from V8 but that it only had implemented a
part of the whole idea, and that it was Plan 9 where /proc was implemented as
we know it today.



-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Meddle not in the affairs of Wizards, for
thou art crunchy, and taste good with ketchup." -- unknown]