Subject: Re: file as a directory
From: Peter Foldiak <Peter.Foldiak@st-andrews.ac.uk>
To: Paolo Ciarrocchi <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com>
Cc: Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       reiserfs-list@namesys.com
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Date: 24 Nov 2004 15:25:54 +0000
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On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 15:02, Paolo Ciarrocchi wrote:
> On 24 Nov 2004 09:16:03 +0000, Peter Foldiak
> <peter.foldiak@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
> [...] 
> > I would really like to implement this for the next version of Hans' file
> > system.
> 
> I don't undersand how you want to use Xpath for not XML file.
> I agree with you that the idea behind Xpath is cool but I fail to
> unserstand how it can be applied to anything but XML

My message was mainly about XML, for which it is easy.
For non-XML, you need some other way of knowing the file format. The
example that originally came up in this thread was

/etc/passwd/[username]

In this case, the passwd file has a known format.
Other file types, like LaTex, html, jpeg also have (at least partially)
known formats. Some selection should be possible even for unknown
formats (e.g. byte range, line-range). There could also be some way of
specifying a new format but I don't know how to do this well. You could
give names (like filenames) to parts of files.
But I think the first step would be to concentrate on XML, and worry
about the rest later.   Peter

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