Re: named streams, extended attributes, and posix

Michael Rothwell
2001-01-19T15:45:41Z

Mo McKinlay wrote:

> (Take symbolic linking, for example - if you ln -s on VFAT, you get
> 'operation not permitted' - named stream/EA operations on a filesystem
> that doesn't support them should return the same, IMHO).

And they would, if the chosen namespace was not supported.

> Also, I don't like the idea of bypassing POSIX in this manner (using ':'
> as a delimeter), even if the underlying filesystem *may* not support it.
>
> What's to say that ext4 (or whatever) won't support named streams, but
> still allow ':'? Your solution as it stands would break in that situation
> (assuming I've not missed something :)

The filesystem, when registering that it supports the "named streams"
namespace, could specify its preferred delimiter to the VFS as well.
Ext4 could use /directory/file/stream, and NTFS could use
/directory/file:stream.

-M