Extended attributes (module and article)

Extended attributes (module and article)

[Micah Elliott]

Hi! I was peeking at the `zsh/attr` module docs and trying to figure
out why it exists. Is it significantly different from the standard
getfattr/setfattr/attr utils (which already have nice completions and
look more featureful)? Does it serve to abstract say Linux's xattr and
Mac's xattr systems? I'm really only using Linux, but I guess that
could be a reason to use the zsh module.

Also, does anyone know what's up with this old-but-probably-awesome
Linux Mag article by Oliver? http://www.linux-mag.com/id/2126/ I swear
I was reading it fully just last week, but now it's truncated and I
can't find an archive of it. Oliver -- do you have the original still,
ideally in a format where LM hasn't html-munged the nice ascii chars
into mdash, etc.? Oh, here's an archive that looks intact, but still
should probably be re-posted somewhere where others will find it:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070124200204/http://www.linux-mag.com/id/2126/

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Re: Extended attributes (module and article)

[Mikael Magnusson]

On 11 January 2012 21:52, Micah Elliott <mde@micahelliott.com> wrote:
> Hi! I was peeking at the `zsh/attr` module docs and trying to figure
> out why it exists. Is it significantly different from the standard
> getfattr/setfattr/attr utils (which already have nice completions and
> look more featureful)? Does it serve to abstract say Linux's xattr and
> Mac's xattr systems? I'm really only using Linux, but I guess that
> could be a reason to use the zsh module.

I wrote it for use with the *(e::) globbing syntax, where calling out
to an external binary for hundreds/thousands of files is just way way
too slow. eg

#usage, *(e:fattr name:) or *(e:fattr name value:)
function fattr() {
  local val
  zgetattr $REPLY user.$1 val 2>/dev/null
  [[ -n "$val" && ( -z "$2" || "$val" =~ "$2" ) ]]
}


-- 
Mikael Magnusson

Re: Extended attributes (module and article)

[François Revol]

On 11/01/2012 21:52, Micah Elliott wrote:
> Hi! I was peeking at the `zsh/attr` module docs and trying to figure
> out why it exists. Is it significantly different from the standard
> getfattr/setfattr/attr utils (which already have nice completions and
> look more featureful)? Does it serve to abstract say Linux's xattr and
> Mac's xattr systems? I'm really only using Linux, but I guess that
> could be a reason to use the zsh module.
>
> Also, does anyone know what's up with this old-but-probably-awesome
> Linux Mag article by Oliver? http://www.linux-mag.com/id/2126/ I swear
> I was reading it fully just last week, but now it's truncated and I
> can't find an archive of it. Oliver -- do you have the original still,
> ideally in a format where LM hasn't html-munged the nice ascii chars
> into mdash, etc.? Oh, here's an archive that looks intact, but still
> should probably be re-posted somewhere where others will find it:
> http://web.archive.org/web/20070124200204/http://www.linux-mag.com/id/2126/
>

On this topic I'd propose you to read the paper I wrote for for DC-2011 
conf, which describes in length issues with xattrs that none seems to 
care about:

http://dcevents.dublincore.org/index.php/IntConf/dc-2011/paper/view/53

François.