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From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Message-ID: <4438@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 7 Jun 89 16:43:01 GMT
References: <106326@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4315@ficc.uu.net> <338@arc.UUCP> <40062@cmcl2.NYU.EDU>
Organization: Xenix Support
Lines: 38

In article <40062@cmcl2.NYU.EDU>, edler@cmcl2.NYU.EDU (Jan Edler) writes:
> We've been a bit indecisive about the exact form of pathname
> extension.  My current preference is to say that "/@" at the beginning
> of a pathname, followed by a file descriptor number (as a string of
> digits) and a "/", means to take the object referred to by the file
> descriptor as the search starting point.

This is an intriguing idea. I, myself, would prefer to make '@' by itself
at the beginning of a file name a special token. This solves the problem
of files beginning with @ in /tmp...

I'd generalise it beyond directories, too. That way you could open '@5' to
clone a descriptor. This is similar to the /dev/fd/5 syntax described by
people using more recent bell releases, except that you can't chdir to
/dev/fd/5/workdir.

Actually, if you have a /dev/fd/5/..., then you don't need a special syntax.

The other thing this could be used for (getting back to @5 for a moment) is
networks. If you're going to make @ special anyway, why not use it where //
is used today in some networks. Instead of //frodo/usr/baggins use
@frodo/usr/baggins.

And maybe one day I could chdir to @cmcl2.NYU.EDU/usr/edler.

Of course this could be implemented as /dev/net/cmcl2.NYU.EDU/usr/edler.

I don't mind the syntax, I just don't care for the explicit mounting business.
I'm not too thrilled with it for disks, either. I'd love to type "cd
/dev/dsk/mydisk" and have it reply with "please insert volume mydisk in
any drive"...

Just a little namei hav`cking, eh?
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.

Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180.
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