Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S267515AbUIJPsY (ORCPT ); Fri, 10 Sep 2004 11:48:24 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267487AbUIJPqi (ORCPT ); Fri, 10 Sep 2004 11:46:38 -0400 Received: from kinesis.swishmail.com ([209.10.110.86]:13833 "EHLO kinesis.swishmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S267515AbUIJPmb (ORCPT ); Fri, 10 Sep 2004 11:42:31 -0400 Message-ID: <4141CCA2.9010005@techsource.com> Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 11:47:46 -0400 From: Timothy Miller MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Hans Reiser CC: Peter Foldiak , Jamie Lokier , Adrian Bunk , viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk, Linus Torvalds , Christoph Hellwig , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Alexander Lyamin aka FLX , ReiserFS List Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4 References: <20040825200859.GA16345@lst.de> <20040825204240.GI21964@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <20040825212518.GK21964@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <20040826001152.GB23423@mail.shareable.org> <20040826003055.GO21964@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <20040826010049.GA24731@mail.shareable.org> <412DA40B.5040806@namesys.com> <20040826140500.GA29965@fs.tum.de> <20040826150202.GE5733@mail.shareable.org> <41410DE7.3090100@techsource.com> <41413A2B.9020405@namesys.com> <1094797973.4838.4.camel@almond.st-and.ac.uk> <4141504B.8030104@namesys.com> In-Reply-To: <4141504B.8030104@namesys.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1954 Lines: 63 Hans Reiser wrote: > Peter Foldiak wrote: > >> On Fri, 2004-09-10 at 06:22, Hans Reiser wrote: >> >> >>> He asked me, why not just access a filename's size as filename/size? >>> >> >> >> I now understand that you need a way to distinguish between something >> like >> >> shoe/size >> >> and >> >> shoe/.../size (or shoe/..size) >> >> The first one is the size of the shoe, the second is the automatically >> generated size of the file (object). You would get into trouble if you >> would not allow the user to use shoe/size for shoe size. Peter >> >> >> >> >> >> > exactly. > > Of course, problem/shoe/size could refer to shoe size in centimeters of > a problem shoe or the size of the problem relating to a shoe in units of > reporters providing press coverage of it or.... > > So there are lots of opportunities for ambiguity in semantics.... > > Still, widely used builtins seem like they should be moderately evasive > of commonly used names. You know, if tools all need to be rewritten anyway to deal with the file metadata "directory", then why not change the symbol that delimits the metadata key? Everyone likes ':', so we'd have "problem/shoe:size". (Don't bother to complain about files which have : in them, because I already know it sucks, but it's an example.) See, unless you can come up with a way to seamlessly make old tools work with the new semantics, then there's no reason not to make more than one change to tools at at the same time. Also, if you take the ':' example literally, then the file system would need to be able to figure out that a file whose literal name is "C:\MYPR0NDIR\BODY_PARTS.JPG" isn't referring to metadata for a file named "C". :) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/