Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!psuvax1!schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu From: schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: object archives (Re: IEEE 1003.2) Message-ID: <4161@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> Date: 15 Dec 88 20:36:48 GMT References: <9137@smoke.BRL.MIL> <33251@think.UUCP> <14946@mimsy.UUCP> <4158@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> <8542@alice.UUCP> Sender: news@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu Reply-To: schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) Organization: Pennsylvania State University, Computer Science Lines: 12 In-reply-to: andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) In article <8542@alice.UUCP>, andrew@alice (Andrew Hume) writes: >i agitate dfor this in plan9 and ken's response was basically that >it would always be too inefficient to do 10 or 20 or 100 or 200 >opens to look at object files. with archives, one open is it. For something like the C library, which gets used constantly, this is sensible, but for libraries that are under development it might be nice to be able to exploit the filesystem. The point is giving users the option shouldn't be too expensive in general. An instance of prior art is X11R3's treatment of fonts: designated directories are filled with font files, and an index file. -- Scott Schwartz