Re: NTFS-like streams?

From: Pavel Machek (pavel@suse.cz)
Date: Mon Aug 14 2000 - 04:56:41 EST


Hi!

> > > and then access the "Icon" resource in it by just doing
> > >
> > > xv ~/myfile/Icon
> >
> > Sorry, this is not going to work. I played with this with podfuk, and
> > xv will probably stat myfile (just for fun), notice it is regular
> > file, and refuse to try to open myfile/Icon.
> >
> > What you however can do is xv ~/myfile#utar/Icon. This actually works
> > for me.
>
> I don't think this is a strong argument. Any program that "knows" that it
> is handling a POSIX filesystem and simply does part of the work itself is
> always going to break on extensions. That's just unavoidable. Adding the
> magic string at the end makes "xv" happy, but might easily make something
> else that assumes POSIX behaviour unhappy instead (ie somebody else does
> 'stat("myfile#utar")' and is unhappy because it doesn't exist).

But stat myfile#utar _does_ exist, and is a directory. Program could
get confused because myfile#utar does not appear on directory listing,
that's about it. I added magicall files that do not appear on
directory listings, but are there for every other operation. This sees
to have done very little breakage.

> [ Put another way: I suspect that we won't support resource forks natively
> for another few years, and HFS etc will have their own specialized
> stuff. I don't care all that much. But at the same time I do believe
> that eventually we'll probably have to handle it. And at _that_ point I
> care about the fact that our internal design has to be robust. It
> doesn't have to make everybody happy, but it has to be clean both
> conceptually and from a pure implementation standpoint. I don't want a
> "hack that works". ]

This is not hack. Imagine file that is both tarred and gzipped. Now, I
can look at its uncompressed but still tarred version:

cat file.tgz#ugz

or I can look at it as a directory

ls file.tgz#utar.

Okay, this is not what you asked for (resource forks), but I believe
it is even more usefull.

                                                                Pavel

-- 
The best software in life is free (not shareware)!		Pavel
GCM d? s-: !g p?:+ au- a--@ w+ v- C++@ UL+++ L++ N++ E++ W--- M- Y- R+

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