Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!umich!sharkey!cfctech!ttardis!rlw
From: rlw@ttardis.UUCP (Ron Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Matt D. / MAC FST
Message-ID: <2463@ttardis.UUCP>
Date: 8 Feb 90 18:26:10 GMT
Organization: Gallifrey
Lines: 38

In article <1101@madnix.UUCP>, jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) writes:
>
>	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.
>-- 
>    Jason Blochowiak - jason@madnix.UUCP

A symbolic link is a directory entry that either:
	a) contains the path name of the target file
or	b) points to a file with one data block, which, in turn, contains
		the pathname of the target file

Method b could easily be implemented on ProDOS and GS/OS.  Method a would
require larger entries in directories (or better yet, variable length entries -
could also allow longer file names to be used).  For ProDOS and GS/OS, method b
is propably the best way to implement symbolic links.

(To the GS/OS and ProDOS development teems: How about doing this? (symbolic
links))

Unix file systems also have what are called "hard links" - these are the
"normal" Unix directory entries - ie: the directory entry contains the inode
number of the file.  This is something that would require an Unix FST to do
on GS/OS.