Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!codas!novavax!hcx1!hcx3!gwp
From: gwp@hcx3.SSD.HARRIS.COM
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: SVR3.0 vs BSD4.3
Message-ID: <48300006@hcx3>
Date: 24 Mar 88 20:47:00 GMT
References: <12414@brl-adm.ARPA>
Lines: 18
Nf-ID: #R:brl-adm.ARPA:12414:hcx3:48300006:000:999
Nf-From: hcx3.SSD.HARRIS.COM!gwp    Mar 24 15:47:00 1988


Written 12:00 pm  Mar 21, 1988 by davidsen@steinmetz (bill davidsen)
>                                     I must confess I think BSD names are
> too much of a good thing... do we really need names longer than the data
> in the file? Most sites trim the filenames to either 1k or something
> smaller, and I doubt that 1% of all files in the world have names
> longer than some reasonable size, such as 64 or even 32 characters.

I don't understand this division between a files "name" and it's
"data".  In many cases (lock files, status files etc.) the files name
_is_ its' data, i.e. the name (and possibly its' permission) is just
about the only thing that is relevant to your application.  From an
implementation standpoint it's natural to think of them as being
different, but from a conceptual standpoint there is no difference
between a files "name" and its' "data", it's _all_ data (only some of
it is used for different things).

Gil Pilz | Harris Computer Systems Div. | gwp@ssd.harris.com