[Python-Dev] closing files and sockets in a timely manner in the stdlib

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> I was happy to find out that the /proc system came from Plan9 because
> I always thought Plan9 was dead water.  But in this particular case
> Plan9 outdid System7 in the the realm of "everything is a file" by
> making everything a file.

However, on Plan 9, /proc/<n>/fd is not a directory, but a regular text
file. There would be one line in this file per open file descriptor,
see

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/3/proc

Also notice that the /proc filesystem did *not* come from Plan 9
originally, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procfs

It originally came from Unix V8, in 1984. In that version, each entry
in /proc was a file, essentially giving access to the process'
address space. Supposedly, it was still possible to find out the
list of open files using that interface, see

http://man.cat-v.org/unix_8th/4/proc

Regards,
Martin