Eh, "the right thing" is in large part about simplicity and uniformity of interface, not just punting on corner cases to save 100 lines of implementation. That

Eh, "the right thing" is in large part about simplicity and uniformity of interface, not just punting on corner cases to save 100 lines of implementation. That Plan 9 managed to keep it's LoC down is credit to the Pike et al but (in part) because Plan 9 actually pushed everything is a file far enough to be useful Plan 9 is -at least compared to Unix- waywayway closer to the right thing than it is worse is better.