From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Tue,  9 May 2000 12:15:32 -0400
From: rob pike rob@plan9.bell-labs.com
Subject: [9fans] Plan 9 future (Was: Re: Are the Infernospaces gone?)
Topicbox-Message-UUID: a8ee5e52-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <20000509161532.UI-UhfeihBY4aVt40_aPnbHtQXg27J0GEIQ8OflSMxM@z>

	One difference being that our equivalent of bind() binds only the chunk
	that contains the object we are binding.

I think this is a big conceptual mistake.  It means that the effect of the bind
depends on the invisible underlying structure of the name space rather than
its visible appearance.  Since the point of a name space is to give intuitive
names to arbitrary structure, your design is sure to confuse.   Worse, I
think it negates the reasons for the exercise.

As an example, our /bin and /dev directories are complex union directories.
The ability to rebind /bin or /dev en masse is a boon for programs that wish
to construct private name spaces, for security or other purposes. In your
world, programs that wish to do this must reconstruct the union directories,
a serious obstacle for things like shell scripts.

I understand your desire to avoid loops, but a) it's easy to make the tools
that walk trees robust against loops and b) it's not nearly as big a deal as
you think (well, your phrase is "rather bad", hardly a rallying cry in support
of your design).  You're second-guessing yourself into a confusing situation,
appealing to the implementation to argue for the behavior you provide
instead of offering transparent, clean behavior.

-rob