ref: 71292834bbafcf6bc409cfd7691f9e6650df025b
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.