From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 19:30:07 -0800 From: Robert Ransom To: 9fans@9fans.net Message-ID: <20110203193007.68f3c8a6@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: References: <201102031245.33842.dexen.devries@gmail.com> <201102031444.40895.dexen.devries@gmail.com> <201102031527.59587.dexen.devries@gmail.com> <86aaidkli8.fsf@cmarib.ramside> <20110203174214.2df27fa6@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=PGP-SHA256; boundary="Sig_/b3tnYTEWEt=WLEiJPNY71MV"; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Subject: Re: [9fans] files vs. directories Topicbox-Message-UUID: ac3ae66c-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 --Sig_/b3tnYTEWEt=WLEiJPNY71MV Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, 3 Feb 2011 20:49:17 -0500 erik quanstrom wrote: > > FreeBSD 8.0 lets you cat the raw data of a directory, and I would > > expect the other free BSDs to have that misfeature, too. >=20 > i don't see how allowing this is a misfeature. regardless, > plan 9 allows it. >=20 > ; sha1sum < /adm/timezone > 05d16cd216a58fae746ae36f72c784d10bcc1392 It felt like a misfeature every time I dumped raw directory entries to my terminal, and I didn't think of a good use like your example. This feature might be more useful if the directory entries were presented to clients of the FS in a textual format, but that would encourage, if not require, far more parsing in the system, and that is bad both for performance and for security. Robert Ransom --Sig_/b3tnYTEWEt=WLEiJPNY71MV Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=signature.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iJwEAQEIAAYFAk1Lcr8ACgkQ4sl+edAygsRICwQAqEG3d43H3qoD8/RnbUVOOuc5 0x6WMg6saCqMThqinqp6IPppyS3W6/ihT6fkfg+H6IOD2GvUqou6Hdvo60uk5Vwo 8mSuM0FESfSz19vMbnX3nkcjkkW94XRGMrj+X8WSSeRPNRvVRJKBvs+i+1LSPuqZ zu4w6Ynh3Y/jfnvygk0= =+WUl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Sig_/b3tnYTEWEt=WLEiJPNY71MV--