Chapter 16. Terminals and Pseudo Terminals

Devices designed for interactive use[1] all have a similar interface derived from the one created decades ago for serial TeleType paper-display terminals and thus dubbed the tty interface. The tty interface is used for accessing serial terminals, consoles, xterms, network logins, and more.

This tty interface is simple in conception but complex in implementation. It is flexible and powerful, which makes it possible to write applications that do not know much about how they get their input and output and can run over the network, on a local screen, or through a modem. Applications can even run under the control of another program without being aware of it.

Unfortunately, it took the Unix implementors several ...

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