From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] mv vs cp From: anothy@cosym.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-Id: <20011008161159.670D1199F3@mail.cse.psu.edu> Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 12:11:29 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 0203aed8-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 // But the idea of a filename, booked into the filename space which says // // "I may not resolve all the time, but if I do, I point to " // // Isn't so inherently evil to me. it is to me. how do i know if it does or doesn't? what's the condition? what's the behaviour if it doesn't? hell, what's the behaviour if it _does_ resolve? questions of whether to follow links or not... it's just never seemed worth it. the _only_ time i've missed symlinks in Plan 9 is in importing packages from elsewhere. this simpler version of what you have above, which _wouldn't_ seem inherently evil to me, would be: "I point to , where x is a set of data." much simpler, much easier to implement (uh, like, files?), much more consistant, and thus easier to understand. even multiple hard links under unix satisfy this: if it's there, it points to a certain set of data. no condidtions on that. // Pointing out M$ has .LNK isn't going to help my cause much is it no, not likely. it's been a while since i've poked at any Windows box, but under at least '95 and '98revA, drop into a shell prompt and try to cat^Wtype foo.lnk. it's not even built into the FS, it's interpreted by the tools, like explorer. -α.