Using One Application With Multiple Terminals???

Avi Freedman freedman at euclid.math.temple.edu
Tue Dec 12 13:14:42 AEST 1989


	What would be involved in writing something for Unix 
	(specifically for Sys V) that would hook up multiple 
	terminals to the same program?  This would be really 
	great for technical support, i.e.  teaching people vi 
	or FoxBase or whatever.  

	I assume (at least with Berkeley, with which I am 
	more familiar), that one could have a number of clients 
	which connect to a "helper" program.  The application 
	program to be shared would be forked by a program which 
	first connect to the "helper" program via a socket, and
	would then remap stdin, stdout, and stderr to this socket
	and fork the application program itself (vi, FoxBase, or
	whatever).  The "helper" program would sit there in a 
	select() system call checking for reads for the stdout
	of the terminals or writes from the stdout of the
	application, and would then route the data appropriately.

	Is this a good way to go about it?  In particular, what 
	if (horror of horrors), someone were to open "/dev/tty"
	instead of using stdin/stdout/stderr?  

	Has anyone done a program like this?  Unfortunaltely,
	I don't have access to the source for Berkeley's script
	program.

	Any help would be appreciated.

				-- Avi Freedman
				freedman at euclid.math.temple.edu
 



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