From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Sean McGrath Subject: Re: file as a directory Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 17:30:33 +0100 Message-ID: <4280E1A9.3010703@propylon.com> References: <2c59f00304112205546349e88e@mail.gmail.com> <41A1FFFC.70507@hist.no> <41A21EAA.2090603@dbservice.com> <41A23496.505@namesys.com> <1101287762.1267.41.camel@pear.st-and.ac.uk> <1115717961.3711.56.camel@grape.st-and.ac.uk> <4280CAEF.5060202@namesys.com> <1115739129.3711.117.camel@grape.st-and.ac.uk> Reply-To: sean.mcgrath@propylon.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: list-help: list-unsubscribe: list-post: Errors-To: flx@namesys.com In-Reply-To: <1115739129.3711.117.camel@grape.st-and.ac.uk> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Peter Foldiak Cc: Hans Reiser , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, reiserfs-list@namesys.com Peter Foldiak wrote: >On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 15:53, Hans Reiser wrote: > > >>I agree with the below in that sometimes you want to see a collection of >>stuff as one file, and sometimes you want to see it as a tree, and that >>file format browsers can be integrated into file system browsers to look >>seamless to users. >> >>A quibble: A name is just a means to select a file; he is completely >>wrong to think that file browsers will eliminate filenames. >> >> > >Yes, even if you think of the whole file system as a single "file", you >need a way to select the bit you need, and you will use names for that >(and whether you call that a filename, a file-part name or an object >name doesn't really matter). > > The thing that interests me most is the difference (if any) between giving a stream of bytes an opaque name e.g. "Chapter 1 of my book.sxw" versus giving a stream of bytes a query expression that can also be considered an opaque name e.g. "/book/chapter[1] " This is what the Russell/Frege descriptive theory of proper names applied to storage systems in a sense[1]. I've written about this stuff before on ITWorld (warning: chatty prose style ahead): Fractals, Self Similarity, and the Whimsical Boundaries of XML Documents http://www.itworld.com/nl/xml_prac/04252002/ A study in XML culture and evolution http://www.itworld.com/nl/ebiz_ent/03252003/ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_name Sean