*BSD News Article 64697


Return to BSD News archive

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