Re: need filetype field in directory entries

Steven Roberts (strobert@ata-sd.com)
Wed, 07 Oct 1998 13:59:01 -0800

Justin Randall wrote:
> This is something an application can handle fine ala magic. If you are
> referring to file browsing, then the browser, too, can examine the
> first few bytes of a file to determine the file type. Not to knock the
> idea of having that all information pre-indexed to expedite a
> file-system GUI or other app, but it's not really necessary.

Of course, the application can do the indexing itself. I did something
similar for Win32 at a previous job. Management dumped the project even
though it got great reviews and users loved it.

Oh well, I am in progress on a ground-up re-implementation (that will be
linux based as well).

Of course the advantage of fs based is a common index (so every app
wouldn't have to keep it's on database). Of course we could just make a
standard library that was sort of like the locate database except more
feature rich...

That way we could have one database, but it would all be in user space,
and not if the fs. And the type of info recorded could be modified
without a breakage in filesystem format.

Regards,
Steven Roberts

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