Helge Hafting <[email protected]> said:
> Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> >On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 12:09:52AM +0200, Robin Rosenberg wrote:
> >>Maybe file/./attribute then. /. on a file is currently
> >>meaningless. That does not avoid the unpleasant fact that has been
> >>brought up by others (only to be ignored), that the directory syntax
> >>does not allow metadata on directories.
> >*Not* that I am endorsing the idea of being able to access metadata
> >via a standard pathname --- I continue to believe that named streams
> >are a bad idea that will be an attractive nuisance to application
> >developers, and if we must do them, then Solaris's openat(2) API is
> >the best way to proceed --- HOWEVER, if people are insistent on being
> >able to do this via standard pathnames, and not introducing a new
> >system call, I would suggest /|/ as the separator as the third least
> >worst option. Why?
> What's wrong with using / as the separator? It is already
> used to separate components of pathnames. Named streams
> are very much like files in a subdirectory.
/ is separator for directories, POSIX mandates its exact use. No, POSIX
isn't broken here, and even if it was, you have to remain compatible.
> This scheme makes for very little change to existing tools,
... while breaking fundamental assumptions by all programs in a major way,
and no sane solution for legacy applications in sight, with unknown
(probably huge) correctness and security implications...
> users may then do a "gimp somefile/icon.jpg" for example.
> Or "ls somefile/*" to see all the named streams/forks.
Please don't rehash this one. It is fundamentally broken.
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