Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!uunet!samsung!know!ladcgw.ladc.bull.com!hermes!fmayhar From: fmayhar@hermes.ladc.bull.com (Frank Mayhar) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: What constitutes a good OS? Message-ID: <1991Jan17.122438@hermes.ladc.bull.com> Date: 17 Jan 91 17:24:38 GMT References: <41754@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <5298@auspex.auspex.com> <41907@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <1991Jan17.004509.5435@kithrup.COM> Sender: news@ladc.bull.com (Usenet News) Reply-To: fmayhar@hermes.ladc.bull.com Organization: Bull HN Information Systems Inc. Los Angeles Development Center Lines: 24 In article <1991Jan17.004509.5435@kithrup.COM>, sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: |> In article <41907@nigel.ee.udel.edu> new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New) writes: |> >> 2) some file system types for UNIX might well *give* directories |> >> indices - directories generally aren't plain-text files in any |> >> case; |> >Not any more. They used to be. This broke a lot of programs at the time. |> |> Bzzt. Wrong answer, but thanks for playing. |> |> Directories have never been plain-text files; they were, in fact, the only |> place that the kernel enforced records. Directories have never been |> writable, except through a limited number of system calls (creat, unlink, |> link, mknod, and later mkdir and rmdir), but they have always been readable. |> NFS does not let one read a directory, if I remember correctly, but I have |> read directories under BSD many, many times. Hmm. McKusick and Karels (and a guy named Chris Landaur (sp?)) disagree with you. According to them, directories originally were basically plaintext files, and handled no differently than other files. This caused problems, though, and was changed. All this was very early on in Unix evolution. -- Frank Mayhar fmayhar@hermes.ladc.bull.com (..!{uunet,hacgate}!ladcgw!fmayhar) Bull HN Information Systems Inc. Los Angeles Development Center 5250 W. Century Blvd., LA, CA 90045 Phone: (213) 216-6241