Re: Versioning file system

[Bryan Henderson]

>We don't need a new special character for every 
>>  new feature.  We've got one, and it's flexible enough to do what you 
want, 
>> as proven by NetApp's extremely successful implementation.

I don't know NetApp's implementation, but I assume it is more than just a 
choice of special character.  If you merely start the directory name with 
a dot, you don't fool anyone but 'ls' and shell wildcard expansion.  (And 
for some enlightened people like me, you don't even fool ls, because we 
use the --almost-all option to show the dot files by default, having been 
burned too many times by invisible files).

I assume NetApp flags the directory specially so that a POSIX directory 
read doesn't get it.  I've seen that done elsewhere.

The same thing, by the way, is possible with Jack's filename:version idea, 
and I assumed that's what he had in mind.  Not that that makes it all OK.

--
Bryan Henderson                     IBM Almaden Research Center
San Jose CA                         Filesystems

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