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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Symbolic Links
Message-ID: <1128@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 10:28:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.1128
Posted: Thu Sep 10 10:28:58 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 08:47:01 EDT
References: <8731@brl-adm.ARPA> <2789@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 21


I proposed a symbolic link that could be used like this:

          $ cd $ABC/$EFG/$XYZ

and explained:
     ...ABC, EFG, and XYZ look like environment variables, but they are
     known to the kernel and accessed via a hash table, not a sequential
     search.

In article <4494@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>
>Anyone for TOPS-10/TOPS/20/VMS "DEFINE"?  Logical names have been around for
>a long time; that they aren't in UNIX may indicate that they aren't the
>panacea you think.  (Anyone know for sure?  DMR?)

There are serious problems with logical names as implemented in these
systems.  For example, if ABC:, EFG:, and XYZ: are logical names, VMS
will not accept a string like "ABC:/EFG:/XYZ" or "ABC:EFG:XYZ:".
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi