Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262201AbUK3RY4 (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:24:56 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262207AbUK3RYz (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:24:55 -0500 Received: from vsmtp2alice.tin.it ([212.216.176.142]:29346 "EHLO vsmtp2alice.tin.it") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262201AbUK3RXG (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:23:06 -0500 Message-ID: <41ACBA91.8020806@futuretg.com> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:23:13 +0000 From: "Dr. Giovanni A. Orlando" Organization: Future Technologies User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; es-ES; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040626 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Peter Foldiak CC: Horst von Brand , Christian Mayrhuber , reiserfs-list@namesys.com, Hans Reiser , Paolo Ciarrocchi , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: file as a directory References: <200411301631.iAUGVT8h007823@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl> <1101834194.17826.194.camel@pear.st-and.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <1101834194.17826.194.camel@pear.st-and.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2684 Lines: 98 Peter Foldiak wrote: >On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 16:31, Horst von Brand wrote: > > >>>But namespace unification is important, >>> >>> >>Why? Directories are directories, files are files, file contents is file >>contents. Mixing them up is a bad idea. >> >> > >I disagree, I think it is a good idea. > > Hi, Please remember DOS. In DOS a directory is a file with a SPECIAL attrib: D_DIR. In Unix, is basically the same. There are nothing bad. The attrib specify that a file with the directory attrib may include additional files or directories. Thanks, Giovanni. >Why is namespace unification important? Because you can use the same >tools on everything. Previously, each tool could handle one namespace. > >A very simple example would be: >I want to count the words in the Appendix of my book. >If I can't select the appendix, my "wc" tool is useless (or very >difficult to use). On the other hand if I can say > >wc ~/book/Appendix > >it's fine. Hans Reiser would say that "namespaces are the roads and >waterways of the operating system" and "the value of an operating system >is proportional to the number of connections you can make". I think he >is right in that. And the authors of Unix knew it too, when they used >the same namespace for devices and files. They didn't say "files are >files and devices are devices". They said the difference should not >matter to the applications. >But there is still namespace fragmentation even in Unix, and this is >just one of them. > > > >> Sure, you could build a filesystem >>of sorts (perhaps more in the vein of persistent programming, or even data >>base systems) where there simply is no distinction (because there are no >>differences to show), but that is something different. >> >> >> >>> and to unify the namespace, you >>>have to use the same syntax. I guess you disagree with me on that. (If >>>not, how would you do it?) >>> >>> >>I'd go one level up: Eliminate the distinctions that bother you, not try to >>patch over them. >> >> > >But that is my point too. Peter > > > -- -- -- Check FT Websites ... http://www.futuretg.com - ftp://ftp.futuretg.com http://www.FTLinuxCourse.com http://www.FTLinuxCourse.com/Certification http://www.rpmparadaise.org http://GNULinuxUtilities.com http://www.YourPersonalOperatingSystem.com WorldWide Global Mobile: +39 393 665 4239 -- - 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/