Subject: Re: file as a directory
From: Peter Foldiak <Peter.Foldiak@st-andrews.ac.uk>
To: Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>
Cc: sean.mcgrath@propylon.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       reiserfs-list@namesys.com
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Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 16:32:10 +0100
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On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 15:53, Hans Reiser wrote:
> I agree with the below in that sometimes you want to see a collection of
> stuff as one file, and sometimes you want to see it as a tree, and that
> file format browsers can be integrated into file system browsers to look
> seamless to users.
> 
> A quibble: A name is just a means to select a file; he is completely
> wrong to think that file browsers will eliminate filenames.

Yes, even if you think of the whole file system as a single "file", you
need a way to select the bit you need, and you will use names for that
(and whether you call that a filename, a file-part name or an object
name doesn't really matter).

It is interesting that both he and I gave the example of a book and
chapters, which is essentially a linear sequence, and the issue was just
the selection of a part of that sequence. It would also be interesting
to think about how you could map an arbitrary data structure more
complicated than a linear sequence (an "object") to disk. This brings up
issues of serialization and object databases....

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