Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!buengc!bph
From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: descriptors vs pathnames (was Re: getcwd() and friends.)
Message-ID: <2623@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 21 Apr 89 16:16:07 GMT
References: <4468@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> <1265@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <6839@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <1277@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: comp.unix.wizards
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 19

In article <1277@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> Greg.Noel@SanDiego.NCR.COM (Greg Noel) writes:
>In article <6839@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>>It is, however, desirable to have permissions for the evaluation of the
>>name too, for sometimes you don't want them to know even what it is
>>they don't know anything about.
>
>Seriously, your point is well taken; but the thing about the opaque object
>was that it could just as easily represent a non-existant object -- the
>operations on it "look like" they still work, so the user of the object
>doesn't know what it is they don't know anything about....

These two statements taken together may just form the DoD-spec version
of VMS, logicals and all.  I'll go look-see and get back to you on
that...

				--Blair
				  "Almost got the microfilm into
				   my vt340 now; just a few more
				   yards..."