Is this a true statement?

[David C. Ullrich]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2001 09:36:13 -0500, "Chris Gonnerman"
<chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:

>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "David C. Ullrich" <ullrich at math.okstate.edu>
>> ??? I thought a device driver was just a file, hence a finite
>> sequence of bytes. You can certainly use Python to write an
>> arbitrary sequence of bytes to a file. No doubt it's much easier
>> in C++ (or rather in typical implementations of C++?) to decide
>> _what_ sequence of bytes to write to that file, but if we're
>> talking about what's literally possible and impossible I don't
>> see how writing a device driver can be impossible in Python.
>
>Writing TO a device driver is easy enough... the previous poster
>was talking about writing the DRIVER in Python.  No OS I'm aware
>of takes device drivers in any languages other than assembler, C,
>and/or C++.

I wasn't aware that any OS used device drivers in _any_
of those languages! I would have thought that compilers and
assemblers accepted code in those languages, and OS's
used the files that were output by those compilers and
assemblers.

Seriously. _Is_ a "device driver" something other than a file?
If it _is_ something other than a file I wish someone would
say so. If a device driver is just a file then I don't see
how the OS can possibly know or care how that file was
generated.


David C. Ullrich
*********************
"Sometimes you can have access violations all the 
time and the program still works." (Michael Caracena, 
comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc 5/1/01)