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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.nla.gov.au!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.ac.net!news.cais.net!nntp.uio.no!news.kth.se!nada.kth.se!f91-men From: f91-men@nada.kth.se (Mattias Engdegård) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem Date: 24 Mar 96 18:36:20 GMT Lines: 28 Message-ID: <f91-men.827692580@nada.kth.se> References: <4hptj4$cf4@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> <3140C968.20699696@netcom.com> <4ia7im$i4m@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> <314A470D.CCE53F0@netcom.com> <4ijs72$cim@josie.abo.fi> <314E0DB7.624ACB10@netcom.com> <4irqph$n9d@josie.abo.fi> <4is431$269g@ausnews.austin.ibm.com> <31531077.2BB2656B@ids2.idsonline.com> <315476A9.6C9DEF3A@netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: alv.nada.kth.se Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:19949 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:15948 In <315476A9.6C9DEF3A@netcom.com> Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com> writes: >> Is there a way to register the EA information in an application >> associated and/or user associated space, such that this info can be >> removed easily with the user or the application and such that the actual >> files do not need to be accessed in order to do so? >Yeah - build a systemwide Registry. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by a "registry". Could you please elaborate? I'm only familiar with MacOS's Finder database, which is an obscure way to associate executable files with four-letter application IDs. There are times when I *really* would like to have a way of storing snippets of meta-information about a file (that is, EAs): I usually have lots of symlinks as shortcuts to all sorts of places in NFS, AFS and alex. Since following them can be very slow (in particular links to distant points in AFS and alex), I don't want my file manager or directory walker or whatever to follow those links just to stat the file and see what's there. But a unix symbolic link doesn't even tell me if it points to a file or a directory (unless I explicitly remember to include a trailing /). Perhaps that is the best use for EAs -- information that isn't absolutely necessary about a file (such as type or comments), but makes things nicer and faster. -- Mattias Engdegård f91-men@nada.kth.se