From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: smiley@zenzebra.mv.com To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> References: <201102031245.33842.dexen.devries@gmail.com> <20110203165859.E501C5B66@mail.bitblocks.com> Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 00:24:31 +0000 In-Reply-To: (Eric Van Hensbergen's message of "Thu, 3 Feb 2011 17:13:23 -0600") Message-ID: <86hbck1wao.fsf@cmarib.ramside> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] files vs. directories Topicbox-Message-UUID: ac110fd6-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 Eric Van Hensbergen writes: >> build an experimental OS around it! But if you go this path, >> do consider providing a few more datatypes in the filesystem >> (integers, file-id, strings, ...). =C2=A0Basically persistent data >> types. Or just use an object or relational database as your >> filesystem. IIRC, Reiserfs was aiming to incorporate general database semantics into the file system design. /me wonders what ever happened to Hans... > gets in the way of the sensible interface. The world has become > considerably richer than collections of byte-stream files, yet we have > no way of notionally representing richer structures in the name space. I occasionally daydream about having naming conventions like: $mtpt/timestamp # application interface node $mtpt/timestamp.printf # returns printf strings representing I/O format $mtpt/timestamp.usage # returns human readable help on "timestamp" file ...etc. --=20 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ |E-Mail: smiley@zenzebra.mv.com PGP key ID: BC549F8B| |Fingerprint: 9329 DB4A 30F5 6EDA D2BA 3489 DAB7 555A BC54 9F8B| +---------------------------------------------------------------+