9fans archive / 2001 / 11 / 760 /    prev next

From: George Michaelson <ggm@apn...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Python filesystem 
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 09:26:47 +1000



Its probably my naievity, but I always read the hideous name as applying
recursively to the entire path to an object, not just its terminal name
within context, which might explain why I have such a hard time with
namespaces which don't lie in the /path/to/file model. I used to have
arguments with my dad about this, he was entirely comfortable with VMS,
Tops-10, EMAS, CP/M, MS/DOS all exposing [device]:[uid,gid]/path/to/file
as part of the name construct. It seemed to me it was bad bad bad.

Having said which, putting the use of semicolon to one side, I don't know
its inherently evil to denote *SOME* token to mean 'what follows is version
information' such that a reference to a file either walks the revision
engine buried in the directory name structure logic, or walks something
like a time-based file nametree to find the best fit. That at least admits
of things like the mh cur:-10 which for MH means a range, but could mean
this thing, walk back 10 from its current state.

Clearly, its useless to do this in userspace. Either its applicable globally
for all processes which can be given objects to work on, or its really not
very useful. So VMS got it right, in as much as it DTRT for you. But yes,
they chose entirely the wrong token to use.

Anybody remember trying to live with Eunice under this stuff?

cheers
	-George
--
George Michaelson       |  APNIC
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