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Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 13:32:32 -0700
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
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To: "Bill Rugolsky Jr." <brugolsky@telemetry-investments.com>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] new syscall: flink
References: <20030407102005.4c13ed7f.manushkinvv@desnol.ru> <200304070709.h37792815083@mozart.cs.berkeley.edu> <20030407113534.1de8dc91.agri@desnol.ru> <b6s3k4$i0i$1@cesium.transmeta.com> <20030407200533.GA23680@ti19>
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Bill Rugolsky Jr. wrote:
> 
> We discussed this previously; I described the problems with
> existing semantics, and on 2000/020/29 you wrote:
> 
> http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=fa.iqoa6kv.flii0q%40ifi.uio.no&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26q%3Dhpa%2Brugolsky%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch
> 
>   "I'm hoping to fix this in 2.5.  The problem is that the way open() is
>   done in the VFS *requires* the creation of a new filestructure."
> 
> I'm still open to suggestions. ;-)
> 

I suggested at one point the following change:

Instead of having the filesystem open() method being passed in a pointer 
to already allocated, partially initialized file structure, that code 
should be moved to a library function, and instead let the open() method 
return a struct file *.  That way open() could either return a reference 
to an already-allocated file or a new one.

	-hpa