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It makes more sense when you realize that it's not that everything is files it's that everything can be treated as a file. There are other APIs to interact with things, but everything can be interacted with as if it was a file. It doesn't seem as bonkers like this.
Well, if you go back far enough you might encounter punch cards or even switches, but then again you're not taking about modern computers anymore.
You could argue that a collection of punch cards is a file
If you put them in a physical file and it gets jostled they go out of order and you have a problem. You want them in stacks.
I think technically it's only a file when it's managed by the system itself (reading, writing, modifying, storing) so punch cards are not files.
Stages of POSIX enlightenment:
Most people stop at stage 2, stage 3 hits when you decide to write a filesystem, stage 4 when you've finished your first filesystem. Stage 5 is when you start working on kernel internals. No one can tell you how to reach stage 6, you must discover it for yourself.
Am I a file?
Can you read me?
"How can files be real if the filesystem isn't real?" - Jaden Smith (probably)
/dev/null sez nothing is also a file
Unfortunately, no one can be told what a file is. You have to see it for yourself.
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the file system goes.
You'll know you've reached stage 6 when you seriously start considering running Plan 9 as a daily driver
Okay, but what are blocks then? A file is really just a bunch of blocked stacked together with the inode metadata also sitting on another block, so is everything just blocks or because you can emulate a block device on a filesystem, are blocks themselves files? If that last part is true then files are infinitely recursive and my head is starting to spin.
You are almost ready to take the next step. But to do so, you must unlearn what you think you know. Write a filesystem that does not have blocks for a media without pages, and you will find the footprints of your next teacher.
But some things are directories (like cgroups). And Networknamespaces were also controled in a weird way.
And then there are kernel features which are not exposed through a file or syscall but through a special type of socket.
Aren't directories just files that say "hey i am directory ABCD and file X, Y and Z are my childs"?
Yep, takes a moment to wrap your head around but the longer you read linux/unix documentation, the more it makes sense why it is the case.
Want take it to 11 plan 9 did it.
Epstein's?
Yeah, but in the BSD land as their licensing is more Libertarian esqu.
