Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932132AbWBYWax (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 17:30:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932137AbWBYWax (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 17:30:53 -0500 Received: from smtp.e7even.com ([83.151.192.19]:48555 "HELO smtp.e7even.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S932132AbWBYWax (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 17:30:53 -0500 Message-ID: <4400DA93.9080901@st-andrews.ac.uk> Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 22:30:43 +0000 From: Peter Foldiak User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Maciej Soltysiak CC: Jesper Juhl , Rik van Riel , Jan Engelhardt , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, reiserfs-list@namesys.com, Hans Reiser Subject: Re: creating live virtual files by concatenation References: <1271316508.20060225153749@dns.toxicfilms.tv> <9a8748490602250735l6161a96dte2805b772a89a436@mail.gmail.com> <612760535.20060225181521@dns.toxicfilms.tv> <9a8748490602251052p3e56334ei755c9ce2100e03c@mail.gmail.com> <1391154345.20060225203352@dns.toxicfilms.tv> In-Reply-To: <1391154345.20060225203352@dns.toxicfilms.tv> 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: 1258 Lines: 26 Maciej Soltysiak wrote: >>I can imagine quite a mess if I open a file that is really a view of >>several files and then start manipulating text in it across "actual >>file" boundaries that could blow up easily. >> >> >Well, I meant that file to be read-only. Just a quick concatentated view >for reading. > > The quick hack might be useful in certain situations. But the really interesting way to do it would be not to distinguish beween "actual" and "non-actual" files. All of them should be equally "actual", it is just that containment (possibly even overlap) would be allowed. The tree structure used by a file system such as Reiser4 would make this very efficient with each "sub-file" corresponding to a key-range. Writing a chapter should change the book that the chapter is part of. That is what would make it really valuable. Of course it would have all sorts of implications (e.g. for metadata for each part) that need to be thought about, but it could be done properly, I think. Peter - 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/