Re: named streams, extended attributes, and posix

Mo McKinlay
2001-01-17T18:03:49Z

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Yesterday, Peter Samuelson (peter@cadcamlab.org) wrote:

>
> [Michael Rothwell]
> > It seems that if you move a file with a colon -- "file:colon" -- in
> > the name from Ext2 to "StreamFS," you would end up with a file named
> > "file" with a stream named "colon". When copying back, you would get
> > "file:colon" back.
>
> What if you copy both 'filename' and 'filename:ext' onto the same fs?
> Do they get combined into one file? That to me violates principle of
> least surprise. The fs should just mangle filenames it doesn't agree
> with, like the existing legacy filesystems already do.

> Any semantics by which 'filename:stream' and 'filename' refer to the
> same file would be b0rken. If instead you use 'filename/stream'
> syntax, at least that is an illegal filename on *all* Linux
> filesystems, so this particular point of confusion does not come up.

Urgh.

We went through this last time around. What happens to directories with
streams? If they are also dirname/stream, what happens when you have a
file called 'stream' within 'dirname'?

Also, it makes it appear that files with streams are directories, which
they are not, so applying the directory accessor to them violates the
principle of least suprise and is misleading. Apply a new accessor (which
the colon would be great for, as it is already used for this purpose --
apart from the fact that POSIX already allows applications to use it in
filenames).

- --
Mo McKinlay
mmckinlay@gnu.org
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