Alternative for device paths #14
Description
Other Systems
MS-DOS has device paths like COM1, CON, LPT1. These files work in any current directory. MS-DOS also has drive letters, giving paths like C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS.
UNIX has device paths like /dev/ttyS1, /dev/tty, /dev/lp0. These all have absolute paths within the common POSIX file hierarchy, and POSIX has no drive letters - filesystems are mounted into the hierarchy somewhere (e.g. /home/jonathan/file.txt).
Neotron Currently
The book currently proposes drive names, like work:/documents/file.txt. It also proposes to use the drive names to indicate devices, such as com1$baud=115200:.
On reflection, these complicated drive names are somewhat undiscoverable. You could have a DRIVES command which will list the known drives, but you cannot exhaustively list all the properties available for each of them.
Some alternatives
Option 1: A MODE command.
Go back to relative MS-DOS style device paths, or place all the devices inside some DEV: drive, such as DEV:lp0 and DEV:com1. Parameters are set for any given device through the use of a MODE command, such as MODE DEV:com1 baud=115200 parity=N stop=1. Now the devices are discoverable (DIR DEV:) but the properties are only discoverable by running the command MODE /?. Additional devices will require an update to the MODE command to support their properties.
Option 2: A sysfs style tree
Adopt the Linux approach of having properties represented by files within a virtual tree. For example, DEV:com1/ is a folder, and within it DEV:com1/baud is a file. You can read the file and get 115200\n, or you can write a string to that file to change the baud rate. The device itself would be DEV:com1/device. Now the devices are discoverable (DIR DEV:) and also the properties are discoverable (DIR DEV:com1/).