On Thu, Jan 04, 2024 at 11:35:37AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > "file description" - is how the file is accessed (position in the file and > > flags associated to how it was opened) > > That's a horrible term that shouldn't be used at all. Apparently some > people use it for what is our 'struct file *", also known as a "file > table entry". Avoid it. Worse, really. As far as I can reconstruct what happened it was something along the lines of "colloquial expression is 'opened file', but that is confusing - sounds like a property+noun, so it might be misparsed as a member of subset of files satisfying the property of 'being opened'; can't have that in a standard, let's come up with something else". Except that what they did come up with had been much worse, for obvious linguistic reasons. The *ONLY* uses for that expression I can think of are 1. When reading POSIX texts, watch out for that one - if you see them talking about a file descriptor in context where it really should be about an opened file, check the wording. If it really says "file descriptOR", it's probably a bug in standard or a codified bullshit practice. If it says "file descriptION" instead, replace with "opened file" and move on. 2. An outstanding example of the taste of that bunch. IO channel would be a saner variant, but it's far too late for that. The 3-way distinction between descriptor/opened file/file as collection of data needs to be explained in UNIX 101; it is userland-visible and it has to be understood. Unfortunately, it's often done in a way that leaves students seriously confused ;-/
