code: 9ferno

ref: 6bb619c8db2867ddd9cd19c0aec05065f5ee0cae
dir: /man/3/indir/

.TH INDIR 3
.SH NAME
indir \- attach to device indirectly by name
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BI "bind  #*" name
[\c
.BI ! spec\c
]
.I " dir"
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Indir
allows any other device to be referred to by its name instead of its perhaps arbitrary single character type;
.I indir
itself has the type character
.RB ` * '.
It has no name space of its own.
On attach (see
.IR attach (5))
.I indir
interprets its device specifier string as the
.I name
of a device to which it should attach, optionally followed by specifier
.I spec
for that device, separated from the
.I name
by an exclamation mark.
Attaching to
.I indir
(eg, by
.IR sys-bind (2)),
effectively attaches to the device with the given
.I name
and
.IR spec ,
and all subsequent operations in the resulting name space access that
device, not
.I indir
itself.
.PP
For example, to access
.IR cap (3),
one could write:
.IP
.B "bind -a '#*cap' /dev"
.PP
The following commands both list the second instance of
.IR ether (3),
first directly, then using
.IR indir :
.IP
.B "ls '#l1'"
.br
.B "ls '#*ether!1'"
.PP
The file
.B /dev/drivers
(see
.IR cons (3))
lists the names of currently configured devices.
.SS Credit
Invented by Bruce Ellis for Lucent's internal Research Inferno to help name dynamically-loaded device drivers.
This is a re-implementation.
.SH SOURCE
.B /emu/port/devindir.c
.br
.B /os/port/devindir.c
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR bind (1),
.IR sys-bind (2),
.IR cons (3)
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
If
.I name
is not configured,
.I indir
returns a suitable diagnostic in the error string.
.SH BUGS
Arguably the kernel
could simply look up the
.I name
itself.