Re: [9fans] hierarchical filesystems for non-file things?

[David Presotto <presotto@closedmind.org>]

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Depends on what you want to call that which Unix did.  We stuck the
proc file system there before there was a plan 9.  Also, Unix had
devices as files, though a hierarchy of 1 is not that general.

There were various file systems on Unix, like the semantic file
system, that represented more than just files.  I remember similar
things also presented in Usenix over the years.

Then there was the Mumps computer system at the Mas General Hosp
built in 1969.  It was a system that presented an integrated
language and database where everything available to the language
was a persistent object.  Not hierarchical though.

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From: David Tolpin <dvd@davidashen.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] hierarchical filesystems for non-file things?
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 13:05:46 +0400 (AMT)
Message-ID: <200403260905.i2Q95kfs076757@adat.davidashen.net>


Is the use of a uniform hierarchical (filesystem-like) representation
for various non-filesystem things an invention brought with Plan 9?