Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!axion!uzi-9mm.fulcrum.bt.co.uk!igb From: igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: Re: Ideas for changes to Unix filesystem Message-ID: Date: 5 Feb 91 09:45:53 GMT References: <1991Jan30.143326.16676@socs.uts.edu.au> <414@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> Sender: isode@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Isode Hackers) Organization: BT Fulcrum, Birmingham Lines: 14 In article bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: > Think of fixed length record files and inserting into them, it would > be nice to be able to just copy/munge the block numbers rather than > the data. What's needed is a version of streams for filesystems. With Multics, the One True Operating System, you could attach modules (== push modules) such as vfile_ to provide additional functionality over and above that which you got from initiate_segment_ and its friends. What would be nice with Unix would be ISAM, record mode, whatever modules you could push on top of the mmap interface. Once you can map files into your address space most things can be done on top of that. ian