Subject: Re: File type by extension is evil (was Re: Why the DOS has many
	ntfs read and write driver,but the linux can't for a long time)
From: Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>
To: "Bernhard R. Link" <brl@pcpool00.mathematik.uni-freiburg.de>
Cc: linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Olivier Galibert <galibert@pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: <20060110103259.GA9285@pcpool00.mathematik.uni-freiburg.de>
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	 <1136824149.5785.75.camel@tara.firmix.at>
	 <1136824880.9957.55.camel@mindpipe> <200601091753.36485.oliver@neukum.org>
	 <20060109171411.GB67773@dspnet.fr.eu.org>
	 <20060110103259.GA9285@pcpool00.mathematik.uni-freiburg.de>
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Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 15:28:07 -0500
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On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 11:32 +0100, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
> * Olivier Galibert <galibert@pobox.com> [060109 19:44]:
> > >From what I can see it does icons on non-executable entirely based on
> > the extension and nothing else on the first pass.
> > 
> > Not a bad strategy, too.  Doing a file(1) on everything can only be
> > slow given the random disk accesses it generates.  Maybe a file(1) as
> > a _second_ pass would work.
> 
> That may be a good strategy if you have user conditioned to all the
> effects you get by this (i.e. if you only focus on Windows users and
> want them provide with a system as broken as they know it) and programs
> adopted to cope with the most ill effects (ever asked why some browsers
> always foozle the name of downloaded files with some .html or the like?)
> 
> For everyone else looking at the file is the only sane way to know the type
> of file.

OK so it's prohibitively expensive to get the file type so this is not
something Nautilus should be doing to every file before even starting to
display the icons.

Lee

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