Re: Improving the Unix API

Alexander Viro (viro@math.psu.edu)
Sun, 27 Jun 1999 21:00:07 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Doug Rabson wrote:
> I'm talking about the concept of a header file containing something like:
>
> #define FL_VFS 0
> #define FL_FOOFS 1
> #define FD_BARFS 2
> ...
>
> not being scalable.
>
> Do you have a complete list of filesystem types? Are you prepared to act
> as an Assigned Number authority for that list. For this kind of problem,
> strings are a damn sight easier to manage in the long term.

Augh... It's ugly, indeed, but... sysctl() is not much nicer and all
systems in question manage to deal with it somehow. OTOH doing it as
strings... Hell knows. I'll look at it. Considering that HFS folks
had already asked for more than one value here (creator and type?) it may
be reasonable. I'm afraid that doing that may open the hell gates ;-/
'N' in *ANA can be 'namespace' as well as 'number'...

<asbestos underware>[1]
BTW, how does NetBSD deal with HFS <cough> forks?
</asbestos underware>

[1] cue current flamew^Wthreads on l-k regarding files-as-directories
hell.

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