Re: file as a directory

[Dr. Giovanni A. Orlando]

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
>
>  


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