On Thu, Jan 04, 2024 at 02:15:17PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 18:25:02 +0000
Al Viro [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
Unfortunately, the terms are clumsy as hell - POSIX ends up with
"file descriptor" (for numbers) vs. "file description" (for IO
channels), which is hard to distinguish when reading and just
as hard to distinguish when listening. "Opened file" (as IO
channel) vs. "file on disc" (as collection of data that might
be accessed via said channels) distinction on top of that also
doesn't help, to put it mildly. It's many decades too late to
do anything about, unfortunately. Pity the UNIX 101 students... ;-/
Just so I understand this correctly.
"file descriptor" - is just what maps to a specific inode.
No -- file descriptor is a number in fdtable that maps to a struct file.
"file description" - is how the file is accessed (position in the file and
flags associated to how it was opened)
file description is posix's awful name for struct file.