Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu!welch
From: welch@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arun Welch)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  syntax of remote pathnames?
Message-ID: <40917@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 29 Mar 89 04:24:32 GMT
References: <8903281410.AA04667@hogg.cc.uoregon.edu> <3728@phri.UUCP>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: Arun Welch <welch@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
Lines: 25


The Envos Medley lisp environment (originally known as Interlisp-D)
implementation uses a novel approach, namely to treat all filenames at
the user level in the local syntax, namely
{host}<dir>subdir>name.type;version, and provides a translation
function to the remote file name.  There are some obvious problems
with this, in that you now have to provide a conversion function to
every OS out there, but from the users standpoint it's kinda nice,
since they don't have to worry about the remote systems syntax.  Since
dmachines use a variety of other hosts and protocols as file servers,
as far as the user is concerned there's no difference between a
TOPS-20 host and a Unix one, they're all just the same.  For example,
{SERVER}<foo>bar>baz.text could get translated to /foo/bar/baz.text or
to <foo.bar>baz.text, depending on whether SERVER was a Unix or a Tops
host. Things like spaces and other "non-standard" characters simply
have to be escaped.


...arun


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Arun Welch
Lisp Systems Programmer, Lab for AI Research, Ohio State University
welch@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu