> Last time I was reading through the specs, it appeared that there
> can be any number of forks, theoretically, in the filesystem. But
> they cannot nest, and I'd be astonished if the OS actually
> supported more then two forks per file.
I think the filesystem allow more than two, but various libraries and
stuff assume two and only two. Not really all that sure.
Anyhow, the HFS specs are all secretive again now that Jobs and back
and Apple suck once again. Urinal^WiMac anyone?
> NTFS, you mean.
yes, sorry. http://blah/secret.asp::$DATA anyone <g>
> OS/2 (HPFS, but also some hacks to support this on DOSFS) also has
> forks, to some degree -- its "extended attributes" allow a lot of
> data to be stored along with a file, though they are more similar
> to an individual resource file then a set of forks.
either way, a directory can handle this and a plethoria of more
complex ideas.
> Yes, once you go to nesting forks, you might as well call the
> things directories, and be done with it. (And deal with the
> efficiency consequences of this -- reiserfs, anyone?)
Its not going to be all that much less efficient, probably more so.
Especially with the dcache.
Consider a typical app:
app/program <- ELF/script whatever
app/icon.kde <- KDE icon
app/icon.gome <- GNOME icon
app/description
etc.
> You still are stuck with breaking normal utilities, though, unless
> you provide some integral way of wrapping the "bundle" up into a
> flat file, if you try to read directly from the forked "directory".
Such cp, etc. aren't aware of data forks as is though, and making
them fork aware is as hard as making them work recursively if not
harder.
cp -r will however work, and high-level stuff like KDE/GNOME whatever
will be able to tell what is really a file and what is really a
program-package or whatever and treat it appropriately for those in
the pointy clicky world.
I really fail to see one single advantage of multiple forks over
directories. Not one.
-cw
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