Linuxcare: Dear Lina: Playing In /proc

[ Thanks to Zack Brown for this link. ]

"Dear Lina,
You've probably heard this question many times, but I've never been able to get a straight answer on it. What exactly are all those numbered directories and zero-length files in the /proc directory?..."

"Seriously, I think Linus considers /proc to be a user-oriented -- and only user-oriented interface. If you're writing a program that needs information in /proc, you'd be better off using a system call to get the information you need. /proc is just a useful thingy to check out on your own. Anything that depends upon it will probably break at some inconvenient time in the future."

Complete Story

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