From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <5e1723a506eab3a3f86f39d50139d148@plan9.bell-labs.com>
From: dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] is plan 9 based on XML?
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Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 20:57:25 -0500
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 > CTSS didn't have a hierarchical file system per se.  Just a single level of
 > directories.  I can't remember how you named an other user's directory
 > or even the system one.

I recall it was just 2-level; a sort of root, plus user
directories (some of them associated with the system).

There was a scheme for linking which appears to be effectively
the same as a Unix symbolic link; the command was

 link name1 name2 prob prog [name3 [name4]]

which meant that what one might think of as name1.name2
in ones own directory would now refer to name3.name4
in the directory of person prog in group prob.
The prob&prog were things like t234 and 8038
which might approximate the one I had.
Permissions were checked at the time of making the
link.

Groups/probs had several "comfiles", directories shared among
a group.  There was a command to switch the current
directory to one of the group's comfile directories and
also to the system one.

In many ways the effect was analogous to the
one described in the early Unix history paper about
the PDP-7: names always referred to the current
directory, but links to others could be made.

 >Multics fixed that and added much more.

That's for sure.

	Dennis