Message-ID: <46783D1C.5030408@redhat.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:31:24 -0400
From: Chris Snook <csnook@redhat.com>
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To: Jack Stone <jack@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
       akpm@linux-foundation.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk,
       alan <alan@clueserver.org>
Subject: Re: Versioning file system
References: <46731169.2090002@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org> <4673182B.4090800@redhat.com> <46739E89.1080003@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org> <46781A5B.9090104@redhat.com> <467829C4.5020101@zytor.com> <46782AA5.2000108@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org> <46783847.1020205@redhat.com> <46783939.7000308@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org>
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Jack Stone wrote:
> Chris Snook wrote:
>> Jack Stone wrote:
>>> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>>> Chris Snook wrote:
>>>>> I pointed out NetApp's .snapshot directories because that's a method
>>>>> that uses legal path character, but doesn't break anything.  With this
>>>>> method, userspace tools will have to be taught that : is suddenly a
>>>>> special character.
>>>> Not to mention that the character historically used for this purpose is
>>>> ; (semicolon.)
>>> But that would cause havoc with shells which use ; to seperate commands.
>>> Using ; would defiantly break userspace
>>>
>>> Jack
>>>
>> I can escape the semicolon just fine in bash.  In fact, tab-completion
>> will do this automatically.  That's really a non-issue.  It just means
>> that anyone who wants to use this feature would have to know what
>> they're doing, which I believe is your goal, right?
> 
> I didn't realise this. Would ; break userspace if it was used as the
> delimiter?

I have no idea.  I've never written a file management utility or library, so I 
don't know if they handle those specially.

> This discussion may be academic as this design is looking less and less
> useful/workable.

Well, I'd argue that the most interesting part of this idea is how it works on 
the inside.  You can implement arbitrarily impractical interfaces to test it out 
as long as your code is modular enough to implement a community-agreeable 
interface once it's ready for a wider audience.

	-- Chris
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