Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!ucsdhub!isg100!nusdhub!rwhite
From: rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: File; Archive; and File-System theory (was: libraries)
Message-ID: <1292@nusdhub.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 89 03:27:48 GMT
References: <13310@ncoast.UUCP>
Organization: National University, San Diego
Lines: 23

in article <13310@ncoast.UUCP>, allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) says:
> 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.

Good enough.  (too much o.s. theory I guess)

My inital point was simply that at no point do you have a "file that
contains other files."  After several e-mail exchanges I have
altered this to "At no time do you have a File which contains other
Files within a single frame of refrence."  e.g. you either open all
of it with open() or you mount it and open parts with open() but you
dont ever open it with open() and then open it's parts with open()
based soley on what you retreived from that open, without invoking
some File-System-Switch-or-whatever change of context.
		-- A necessary, but usually moot, distinction.

Rob.

"Convoluted?  My thinking is not convoluted;  it simply tends to vary
between multi-polar states whose description, in terms of spacial
relativity, would produce a plane-segment-tiled model of a landscape
which may, or may not be, Flat (in some areas ;-)."