Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SLCS.SLB.COM!7thSon
From: 7thSon@SLCS.SLB.COM (Chris Garrigues)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: syntax of remote pathnames?
Message-ID: <19890329183631.2.7THSON@GLOWWORM.LispM.SLCS.SLB.COM>
Date: 29 Mar 89 18:36:00 GMT
References: <8903290327.AA06017@multimax.encore.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 45


    Date: Tue, 28 Mar 89 22:27:38 -0500
    From: Barry Shein <bzs@encore.com>


    I'm having problems understanding all the baroque (or is that rococo?)
    suggestions, let's try starting at the beginning...

What I'm having trouble understanding is why this is such a major issue
so late in OS/networking development.  I'm typing this from my Lisp
machine and from here can access files on all sorts of different hosts
with no problem.

If I want to grab a file from SRI-NIC, I say
"SRI-NIC.ARPA:<RFC>RFC-INDEX.TXT" and I get it.  If I want to write this
file onto my lisp machine file server, I say
"B:>7thson>text>RFC-index.text" and it writes there.  If I want to write
it only one of our Suns, I say "LINUS:~7thson/rfc-index" and it gets
there.  This is using an operating system which has been around for
quite a while and it's been WORKING!!!

	    foo:<bar>baz.xxx

    or

	    <foo.bar>baz.xxx

    ?

    They can both exist simultaneously and describe different files. The
    same can be true for VMS and other OS's that have this sort of thing
    for devices and logical names. Pity.

I think your problem here is in trying to force pathnames into the
rather limited Unix model.  This also loses (good handling of)
extensions and version numbers.  

    Anyhow, I think Keep It Simple might be a good plan for this one,
    trying to cover every unusual case usually makes for a bad design
    ("hard cases make bad law".)

Of course.


Chris