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Is this a true statement?

D-Man dsh8290 at rit.edu
Sun Jun 24 13:29:24 EDT 2001 
On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 04:12:49PM +0000, David C. Ullrich wrote:
[snipped long discussion]

When I read the original question I got the impression that "write a
device driver in Python" meant "A person sits down at a console with a
text editor, writes some Python code that implements the device's spec
in terms of the driver API specified by the kernel".  David Ullrich is
taking "write a device driver in Python" to mean "output the bytes
that comprised the finished driver to a file that the kernel can load
and execute".  In the former meaning, no a device driver can't be
written in Python.  In the latter, then yes, python has the ability to
write binary data to a file.  It also goes, then, to say that one
could write the driver using only a hex editor (or the "front panel",
for Steve :-)).

I think that most people thought the first interpretation of the
original question was obivous and thus did a poor job of answering
David's questions.  At the pratical level, (as David also says) a
device driver can't be written in Python.  At a more theoretical
level, David is correct, almost.  A device driver isn't a file, but a
sequence of bytes in memory in the kernel's address space :-).  

I hope the original poster now understands the answer to his question
and not too many people have been upset by the miscommunication in the
discussion.

-D
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