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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!newsfeed.internetmci.com!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!kalessin From: Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com> Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-ID: <315CA0A1.6C5C9796@netcom.com> Sender: kalessin@netcom13.netcom.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) References: <4hptj4$cf4@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> <3140C968.20699696@netcom.com> <4ilgto$861@floyd.sw.oz.au> <4j6if4$15gk@news.missouri.edu> <315834CD.7C4DA6C7@netcom.com> <4jc6q5$bgd@josie.abo.fi> <315B0727.70172281@netcom.com> <wska042okz.fsf@orcus.ping.at> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 02:46:57 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (X11; I; Linux 1.2.13 i486) Lines: 64 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:20364 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:16362 Robert Bihlmeyer wrote: > > Hi, > > >>>>> In article <315B0727.70172281@netcom.com>, > >>>>> Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com> writes: > > > Yes... I've been thinking about this quite a bit. If we throw away the > > directory bit, > > > 1. how would a user interface (bash, xfilemanager, etc) know if an > > object (general term for the file-directory complex) is a file or > > a directory? What would "ls -F" look like? > > Why would you throw the directory bit away? Keep it as a hint, that > this object is really and only a directory. ls -F will give you > "foo/", etc. But then who is going to set that bit?! The user? That's a pain in the butt to keep fooling with. > > 2. If an object has no files inside it (in it's directory), and it's > > data stream length is 0, is it a file or a directory? > > Are there really empty directories - don't they always contain at > least "." and ".." You still havn't answered the question. Assume an empty directory is a directory with only two files: "." and ".." > > 3. How do you specify EA's for a directory? In other words, how do you > > have an icon for a directory? > > 4. If we designate file types by <filename>/filetype, and > > "/usr/bin/groff/filetype" tells us "groff"'s filetype, then we > > can no longer have files with the name "filetype", since they would > > be interpreted to be indicating their parent object's file type. > > However, this could be solved by having all "attributes" start > > with a special character - like "$" or something else. > > Yes, we have a namespace problem here. A solution would be to locate > directory-EAs by something like "/usr/bin/./icon". Forbidding "$" at > the start of a filename is better than forbidding the name "filetype" > - but not much. I like this idea. > > 5. This will basically kill tar, cpio, and other backup utilities, since > > they backup either a file's contents, or the subfiles, but never > > both. > > A file's content - when opened as directory - could be made available > as the subfile "content". Make tar and consorts think it is a > directory and you're set. Of course for utilities to be really useful, > you'd have to make them EA-aware. Namespace problems again - "content"? what if the file already exists? -- Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com> Website ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/ka/kalessin/adam.html Linux - OS/2