Re: [9fans] Multi-dimensional filesystem

[tlaronde@polynum.com]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 04:11:11PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> > I think you missed the point. What I have given is an example, what
> > indeed made me wonder, initially, about a way to simply store
> > definitions as a text file, the relationships between the notions
> > being described by a directory structure. It was obvious rapidly
> > that this won't do in a classical hierarchical filesystem.
>
> i think this can be done with a traditional file system as long as
> you don't insist that a file belong to exactly one directory.  (that is
> messing with ".." is the hard way to go.)
>
> (note that plan 9 file servers already do this in a limited way since
> the dump file system allows an unchanging file or directory to be
> a member of as many /n/dump/yyyy/mmdd[.seq] heirarchies as there are
> dumps between changes.)

Yes, the multiplicity of an entry is possible on various systems
with various means that are hard or soft links, unions, pointing on
shared blocks etc. What is not here is to obtain "naturally" a view
of all the relations of an entry, specially for the parents. The
"getting dot-dot right" is precisely the problem that there are
multiple paths, and only one is valid for a classical dir tree and
you got to follow this one correct path back. Here, this multiplicity
is simultaneously valid, and all the paths are the correct answer.

--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
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