Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!tank!uxc!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: File; Archive; and File-System theory (was: libraries) Message-ID: <13310@ncoast.UUCP> Date: 5 Jan 89 00:55:20 GMT References: <13300@ncoast.UUCP> <1286@nusdhub.UUCP> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) Followup-To: comp.unix.wizards Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh Lines: 26 As quoted from <1286@nusdhub.UUCP> by rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.): +--------------- | If you were to alter an archive sufficinetly to make it useful as a file | system it wouldn't be an "archive" any more, you wouldn't need the | archiving tool (because normal file system tools and functions would then | apply), and it wouldn't be portable (unless it really caught on ;-). +--------------- You've just proved that if I put "ar" in the FSS of my SVR3.1 box at work, I'd have successfully made it into a file system instead of an archive. On a V7 system, a V6 filesystem is treated as a file -- yes, an *archive*. (See the old V7 manuals.) Does this magically make it *not* a file system? Of course not. It's just not a *native* file system -- which is why System V.3 has the FSS, so that non-native filesystems can be *made* native. There is effectively only one difference between file systems and archives, we seem to be agreed; however, you consider it to be an absolutely fundamental difference, whereas I consider it to be minor and trivial. ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, comp.sources.misc moderator and one admin of ncoast PA UN*X uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu comp.sources.misc is moving off ncoast -- please do NOT send submissions direct Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@.