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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.ysu.edu!news.cps.udayton.edu!news.engr.udayton.edu!blackbird.afit.af.mil!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!Austria.EU.net!news.ping.at!orcus.ping.at!orcus.ping.at!not-for-mail From: robbe@orcus.ping.at (Robert Bihlmeyer) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem Date: 29 Mar 1996 11:14:37 +0100 Organization: At Orcus Lines: 50 Sender: robbe@orcus.ping.at Message-ID: <wska042okz.fsf@orcus.ping.at> 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> NNTP-Posting-Host: orcus.ping.at In-reply-to: Adam Megacz's message of Thu, 28 Mar 1996 21:39:51 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:20577 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:16561 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. > 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 ".." > 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. > 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. > 6. How do we "emulate" the directory bit for existing apps? We don't (see above). Robbe