ptrace & Re: Mark Williams csd

Henry Spencer henry at utzoo.UUCP
Sun Dec 30 10:52:08 AEST 1984


Actually, V8's "/proc" seems like a much cleaner solution to the nasty
efficiency problems of ptrace, and it too is compatible.

(For those who haven't heard about /proc [where've you been?!?], the
basic notion is that there is a magic /proc directory -- actually just
a figment of the file system's imagination -- which contains "files"
each of which is the virtual memory of a currently-running process.
Subject to the usual issues of permissions etc., you can read and write
them using the ordinary system calls.  There are a few ioctls you can
use to accomplish the odder ptrace operations.  I think there may be a
paper about it in the "Unix Revisited" BLTJ.)
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry



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