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From: Makey@LOGICON.ARPA (Jeff Makey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Keywords: GNU OS features kernel fun!
Message-ID: <443@logicon.arpa>
Date: 4 Jun 89 23:26:04 GMT
References: <9402@alice.UUCP>
Organization: Logicon, Inc., San Diego, CA
Lines: 28

In article <9402@alice.UUCP> andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) writes:
>storing information is what a filesystem is for.
>if you want to use regular expressions, put the information
>in a file.

File names are stored in directories.  Directories are files.  What's
the problem?

>don't complicate a universal mechanism like
>the file-system name space just so you can be lazy about
>selecting filenames.

How does the kernel become more complicated just because file names
can be 255 characters long instead of 14?  Just change a #define'd
constant and away you go.  Considering that C provides poor support
for character strings that may or may not be null-terminated (the
format in which the short filenames are stored), the Berkeley
directory format may actually result in a simpler kernel!

Long file names are useful.  Just because 14 characters is enough for
you does not mean it is enough for anyone else.  Will you next suggest
that 65535 inodes are enough for *any* file system?

                           :: Jeff Makey

Department of Tautological Pleonasms and Superfluous Redundancies Department
    Disclaimer: Logicon doesn't even know we're running news.
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