Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!sri-unix!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: The 1001 Paths
Message-ID: <819@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 26 Mar 88 02:11:07 GMT
References: <4587@garfield.UUCP> <5489@well.UUCP> <850@nuchat.UUCP>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 47
Keywords: open
Summary: Great!

In article <850@nuchat.UUCP>, peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
> This is a fantasy...
> 1> mount PATH:
> 1> Assign C: PATH:df0:c!df1:c!ram:c
...
> 'nuff said?

Yea! !!!  (That's me jumping up and down for emphasis.)  Great!  Are
you offering? :-)

Only two reservations:  1)  Is this syntax going to pass through
assign, or would it barf?  I'm not near my amiga, so I can't try it.
2)  Could this be implemented efficiently?  At all?  Remember, you need
to do something different when you go to open such a file for output
(creation) than when you open one for input (preexisting).

Oops.  A third reservation, or actually a recommended extension.  It
would be nice if you had a syntax for specifying the directory to
CREATE a file in.  In the common case where you are caching some files
on ram: disk for speed, this ram: directory would want to go first in
the search path.  But this would be a bad place to put a newly created
file specified by path.  Let me clarify:

1> assign c:  path:ram:c!df0:c!df1:c
1> copy development:neathack c:

You wouldn't (usually) want neathack to be copied to ram:c, but
probably to df0:c (lets assume this for argument's sake).  So the rule
that you create the file in the first directory in the path just isn't
good.  I suppose you could create it in the first non-ram disk
directory but this seems sloppy (you might WANT to create it in ram:),
and requires the implementation to figure out what is a ram disk.  A
better solution would be to extend the syntax to allow the explicit
specification of the directory to create new files in.  E.g.,

1> assign c:  path:ram:c!df0:c!df1:c#df0:c

Not pretty, I know.  I don't care about the syntax (not much), I care
about the capability.

I'd be interested in discussing this further with you offline, if you'd
mail something to me to give me a return path (all my attempts to mail
to you seem to get nowhere).
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds