From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 08:48:29 +0200 From: tlaronde@polynum.com To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: <20120817064829.GA492@polynum.com> References: <20120804152016.GB433@polynum.com> <20120805173639.GA395@polynum.com> <20120815173327.GA424@polynum.com> <20120815200949.4628BB85B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20120815212734.GA1190@polynum.com> <20120816194845.GA1519@polynum.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Subject: Re: [9fans] Multi-dimensional filesystem Topicbox-Message-UUID: aa7842a6-ead7-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 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 http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C