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From: toddpw@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Logical file linking?
Message-ID: <1990Jun4.014522.1843@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu>
Date: 4 Jun 90 01:45:22 GMT
References: <1990Jun1.190541.2119@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> <13041@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Sender: news@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 20

gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:

>In article <1990Jun1.190541.2119@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> neufeld@physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld) writes:
>>   Can anybody familiar with the vagaries of GS/OS tell me whether there
>>might some time be a facility under ProDOS for forming logical links
>>between directories, as the "ln" command in UNIX.

>No, and it's because UNIX has essentially TWO filesystems, a flat one
>of "inodes" and a hierarchical one imposed on top of that using a
>special inode type as a directory (whose entries are just paired names
>and inode numbers).  The ProDOS filesystem has only the hierarchy.

So what? Soft links could be implemented as a new storage type, with the linked
pathname stored in the key block. Prodos Pascal partitions and GS/OS forked
files are implemented using new storage types also.

Prodos 8 might barf on them but GS/OS programs shouldn't notice the difference.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu