Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!ulysses!andante!alice!andrew
From: andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Summary: statement of intention
Keywords: GNU OS features kernel fun!
Message-ID: <9422@alice.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jun 89 10:38:31 GMT
References: <106326@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4315@ficc.uu.net> <338@arc.UUCP> <539@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
Lines: 18



	I did not mean to imply that barnett is lazy;
nor that any attempt to use part of the filename for
semantic reasons is stupid (.c and .h is useful!).

	my point is that if you have structured names like
<machine><report>-<option>.<time_period> (barnett's example),
the "lazy part" is putting that in the filename and using the
shell's pattern matching to select files. The alternative
(there are obviously bunches) is to put this database in a file
that looks like
<datafile>\t<machine>\t<report>\t<option>\t<time_period>
and use awk (or cut) to select on arbitrary fields. e.g.
	more `awk '$2=="mymachine"{print $1}'`

this is only slighlty more work, much more flexible AND
doesn't require the kernel to support gargantuan filenames.