Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: filesystem links (was: yet another 1.4 request)
Message-ID: <8490@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 30 Jun 89 01:35:16 GMT
References: <3961@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 34

From article <3961@sugar.hackercorp.com>, by peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva):
> In article <112459@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, page%swap@Sun.COM (Bob Page) writes:
>> strengths and limitations.  Under the Amiga FS in the non-existant
>> v1.4, all links are soft links.  However, UNIX-heads have come to
>> think of soft links as being able to cross file systems, and the FS
>> links under the non-existant v1.4 don't.
> 
> Why not? because they're really hard links but don't have all the UNIX
> semantics?

I have no direct line into Amiga, obviously, but thinking on how I
would personally implement file system links, I can think of two
seperate possibilities:

1) You're right, they're really "hard", i.e. in the file header block,
instead of the pointers to sectors, there's a single pointer to the
file header block of the REAL file, or

2) the file header block contains a symbolic name, which the DOS
handler then uses to find the real file on the device. However, if the
symbolic name refers to a file on another device, the DOS handler
would then have to send a DosPacket to the DOS handler in charge of
that other device. I see no reason why it wouldn't be doable -- but
they might have run out of time or some similar problem.

Note that I haven't looked at the docs from the latest DevCon, so I
have no idea whether this is covered there. I suspect that it is,
sigh...

--
    Eric Lee Green              P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509     
     ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg     (318)989-9849    
"I have seen or heard 'designer of the 68000' attached to so many names that
 I can only guess that the 68000 was produced by Cecil B. DeMille." -- Bcase