Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!uwvax!astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason From: jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Matt D. / MAC FST Message-ID: <1101@madnix.UUCP> Date: 6 Feb 90 14:31:40 GMT References: <9001311847.AA29777@apple.com> <12775@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM> Reply-To: jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) Organization: ARP Software, Madison, WI Lines: 67 In article <12775@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM> cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson) writes: >In article <9001311847.AA29777@apple.com> NOSES@DBNINF5.BITNET (Achim Patzner) writes: >[...hfs fst...] >>volumes to GS/OS volumes... The same thing could be done by writing a >>program like the Mac's AFE utility as GS/OS is able to read those volumes at >>the block level. All that would have to be done was reading some Mac manuals >>about the structure of a Mac volume and writing a short utility that does the >>transfer. That doesn't sound too difficult to me. (No, *I* won't do it; > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >Hah hah hee hee... Is it just me, or do people always say "It's not that bad, really, but hell if _I'm_ going to do it."? Btw, saying that a one-shot translator would be as useful in comparison with a HFS FST is like saying that punch cards do just as good a job as hard disks. Well, yeah, they do the same thing (store data), just not quite as conveniently, or quickly (in terms of direct response to the user). Kinda like not having DA's around (on a single-tasking machine - I personally do prefer "xcalc &", but that's another issue entirely) all the time - imagine having to exit your current application, and then launch your calculator program, figure something out, then... Enough with the analogies, eh? >I have yet to figure out whether the creators of HFS were insane or brilliant. >'B-Trees', for god's sake. Try deciphering one of those. You can't even >tell what files are hidden in subdirectories, because you can't even >_find_ the subdirectory to start with. And I haven't found any technotes >that deal with this topic... (hey Cary, remember this topic? ) Yes, this is unfortunate - I'd really like a Mac TN describing the format myself, if for no other reason than to prove that all moderately good programmers are inherently insane, which is to say nothing of the great programmers... >Gosh, for all I know, HFS is tame. Haven't the foggiest idea how Unix handles >things, espec. linked files and the like.. (now _there's_ a feature I'd like >to see. maybe. ) I've yet to delve into the depths of HFS (aww, come on, B-Trees aren't all that bad, at least if you're just reading them) but the unix filesystems I've seen are fairly simple. There are a fixed number of i-nodes (either index or info nodes, forget which), and each file gets one. The directory entries reference the file by its i-node. Each i-node keeps track of where the file is sitting on the media (by using something vaguely like what ProDOS does, although unix's filesystem seems somewhat better suited to massive changes in file size), how many references there are to it (so that when all of the references have been "unlinked", the file itself gets nuked), access privs, and some other gunk. Of course, this is a rather light treatment for a filesystem, but this is comp.sys.apple, after all. Well, come to think of it, I would like a unix-like filesystem for the //gs - there've been a large number of times when I wished that I could do something kinda neat like "ln -s ...". Someone's .sig said that symbolic links are the GOTO's of filesystems - although I tend to avoid them when possible, I'm not a GOTO-phobe. >>Achim >>(Noses@DBNINF5.bitnet; if that won't work, try {anything}!unido!bnu!patzner) > Chan Wilson -- cwilson@nisc.sri.com radius!cwilson@apple.com >Janitor/Architect of comp.binaries.apple2 archive on wuarchive.wustl.edu Congratulations, you've made it through "Jason's incoherent _I've been programming for 14 hours, and I'm not tired yet. Really._ ramblings", part MCXM (?). -- Jason Blochowiak - jason@madnix.UUCP or, try: astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason@spool.cs.wisc.edu "Education, like neurosis, begins at home." - Milton R. Saperstein