reference counting.. continued..

[Julian Elischer]

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> In message <Pine.BSF.4.21.0406091124120.57882-100000 at InterJet.elischer.org>, Ju
> lian Elischer writes:
> >
> >There are several goals that need to be kept in mind.
> 
> Please, whatever you do, show that your API will deal with the
> refcounting of struct tty.  Pay particular attention to the
> sysctl function which makes the difference between a CS-101
> assignment and the real world.

yes this is the kind of thing that makes for 'fun'..
So, having just dealt with it, 
how would you go about describing the general case that your example
falls into (for example if you were writing a textbook)?