Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!UMIX.CC.UMICH.EDU!thompson%pan
From: thompson%pan@UMIX.CC.UMICH.EDU (John Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: re: reason to buy Apollos
Message-ID: <9007131342.AA25868@pan.ssec.honeywell.com>
Date: 13 Jul 90 13:42:25 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 36



> In article <9007121442.AA01927@richter.mit.edu>, krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU
> (David Krowitz) writes:
>   It would be *much* cleaner if AFS did what Domain/OS does ...
>   namely put the host entry directories in // rather than in /.
> 
> Actually, you might be surprised at how many programs break because of the
> '//' notation.  AFS currently puts all the machine names in /afs.  But each
> machine is not an equal member of a large distributed file system.  Instead,
> it's much more of a traditional client/server relationship.  I don't
> particularly like this aspect of AFS.
This is from Apollo's documentation, so it is not the word of GOD nor POSIX,
but the implication is that POSIX supports (allows for?) the double-slash.

From //node/install/doc/apollo/os.v.10.2__notes --
     1.3.5  POSIX

     We made the following changes to the operating system to be compatible
     with POSIX. They may result in incompatibilities with previous
     releases:

     More than two slashes at the beginning of a pathname will be
     compressed to a single slash. (One or two slashes at the beginning of
     a pathname will not be changed.)

From //node/install/doc/apollo/os.v.10.2__posix --
     2.3*  General Terms.
     pathname.  A _pathname_ beginning with two slashes resolves to the
     network-wide root.  The leafname following the two slashes is defined to 
     be the name of a node in the network.

Any POSIX experts out there?  Regardless of standards or anything else, I
personally _love_ the // notation.  No NFS mounts, a consistent naming 
convention, and the concept of the entire network as a sort of super-directory
are all appealing to me.