From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>
Subject: Re: file as a directory
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 08:13:32 -0800
Message-ID: <41A7562C.2000906@namesys.com>
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To: Peter Foldiak <Peter.Foldiak@st-andrews.ac.uk>
Cc: Paolo Ciarrocchi <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, reiserfs-list@namesys.com

Peter Foldiak wrote:

>On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 15:02, Paolo Ciarrocchi wrote:
>  
>
>>On 24 Nov 2004 09:16:03 +0000, Peter Foldiak
>><peter.foldiak@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>>[...] 
>>    
>>
>>>I would really like to implement this for the next version of Hans' file
>>>system.
>>>      
>>>
>>I don't undersand how you want to use Xpath for not XML file.
>>I agree with you that the idea behind Xpath is cool but I fail to
>>unserstand how it can be applied to anything but XML
>>    
>>
>
>My message was mainly about XML, for which it is easy.
>For non-XML, you need some other way of knowing the file format. The
>example that originally came up in this thread was
>
>/etc/passwd/[username]
>
>In this case, the passwd file has a known format.
>Other file types, like LaTex, html, jpeg also have (at least partially)
>known formats. Some selection should be possible even for unknown
>formats (e.g. byte range, line-range). There could also be some way of
>specifying a new format but I don't know how to do this well. You could
>give names (like filenames) to parts of files.
>But I think the first step would be to concentrate on XML, and worry
>about the rest later.   Peter
>
>
>
>  
>
I think Peter is right.  It would be nice to have an interpreter for 
each of the common file formats, and  XML is just the biggest one.