Re: Carrying Attributes too Far

["Alexander G. M. Smith" <agmsmith@rogers.com>]

Martin Wilck wrote on 19 Sep 2003 10:42:35 +0200:
> Hey folks, I know it's not my business, but '...', ,',,', '_', '!', '@',
> '-' ... is this really a serious discussion? What about '"' or even ' '?

No, they cause problems with various shell special characters.  So you'd have to escape them with a preceeding backslash if you used them.  That's awkward (even more than using a shifted letter like "_").

> There is enough cryptic stuff already in our file systems. Are you
> prepared to answer tons of email asking what those cryptic files are
> for, or suspecting crackers at work?

Just explain to them that it's a new operating system and things are different there.  If it's too annoying, we can stick a virtual readme file in all ,, directories explaining what it is.  Maybe one for each language too :-)

> Why don't you just call it '.reiserfs-metadata' or similar? Is it really
> so important how many keystrokes the name takes? Why are you debating
> about localization and, at the same, arguing about the position of
> characters on your (U.S., I suppose) keyboard?

.reiserfs-metadata is English.  And it's also ReiserFS specific, while I want to name attributes in other fildirute style file systems too.  Saving typing effort on teletype keyboards is an ancient Unix tradition.

- Alex

P.S.  How about ".,"?  Makes it hidden to older systems, yet isn't too hard to type.