On 14 Aug 2000 wingel@t1.ctrl-c.liu.se wrote:
> [replying to my self *sigh*]
> I wrote:
> >Files with alternate streams look exactly like normal files except
> >that they also have a S_IFCOMPLEX flag and that one can use them as
> >directories. When accessing such a file as a directory, it should
> >act as a separate filesystem of its own, so that renames and links
> >work inside this filesystem, but not outside it:
>
> This introduces one new thing which is really incompatible with
> POSIX filesystems, a file that can also act as a directory.
That's absolutely horrible.
> What is the basic reason why this directory can't live in a special
> directory called ".fork"? So instead of doing "cd file-with-forks"
> one does "cd .fork/file-with-forks"?
That's also horrible.
BTW: What do you do if there's a real directory called ".fork"? Or a file?
You also still have the original problem of naming the forks!
If I create "foo" and "bar", both with a fork called "splat", what tree do
I get? This one:
foo
bar
.fork/foo:splat
.fork/bar:splat
(i.e. my idea, but with all the files partially duplicated under magically
created special directories)? This is truly horrible.
> That would work on ext2, NFS or any POSIX like filesystem.
It might possibly work, but it would leave a mess on the keyboard. Don't
do it.
> The disadvantage is that there will be a magic directory called
> .fork (with the same permissions as the parent directory I suppose)
> which can't be renamed or deleted. The subdirectories inside
> the .fork-directory would have the same permissions as the
> corresponding file and would have the same limitations as mounted
> filesystems, no hardlinks outside of the directory. And if one
> deletes or renames the parent, the .fork directory follows.
It's a horrible mess, and it solves precisely NOTHING - the same problem
remains!
James.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 15 2000 - 21:00:32 EST