Re: I discussed reading directories as files with jra, Stallman, and loic

Bill Huey (billh@mag.ucsd.edu)
Mon, 21 Jun 1999 01:36:25 -0700 (PDT)


> Ahem.
>
> I didn't imply that text files are good, only that having a directory
> which contains the /etc/services entries isn't exactly a cool idea either
> (neither is a text file, BTW).

> It's really a database. So use one -- glibc supports DB or NIS or
> whatever else you want to implement.

The BeOS file system has a directory inode pointer within it's inode
structure definition. The unused parts of the inode end being used
as a high speed property/attribute list, while the directory inode
pointer thing is use for the attribute overflow.

It's quite nifty and is useful for stuff like making a strong MIME type
determination without any regard to the unclarity of using file suffixes.

It's a winner for me.

> Matthias Urlichs | noris network GmbH | smurf@noris.de | ICQ: 20193661

bill

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