Re: named streams, extended attributes, and posix

Mo McKinlay
2001-01-19T15:00:34Z

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> Well, EAs are accessed via a special API. The paper also covers that.
> Streams, however, are by nature accessed as files; this is what makes
> them not EAs. EAs are set and retrieved atomically. Streams can be used
> with open(), seek(), read(), write(), etc. This is actually more "unixy"
> than EAs, as the usual set of Unix functions and tools can work with
> streams unmodified; i.e., without knowledge of a special API. Of course,
> cp() is the exception. It would have to be able to enumerate and copy
> all the streams.

Hokay, I've skimmed the paper, most of it makes sense, although I still
think the additional separator is a bad idea (which I know isn't what I
said last time around, originally, but I've had a chance to ponder a
little more since :). Hence, I reckon we should have:

openstream(file, stream, flags)

Where 'file' should be an fd (although i'm sure the VFS gods will think of
plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea, at which point I'll
conventiently change my mind ;). Stream is simply the name of the stream,
flags are as with open() (O_RDONLY, et al). openstream() then returns an
fd which can be read/written/sendfiled/closed as the programmer wishes.

How daft does this sound?

Apart from the additional of a new open()-type call, your paper seems to
be fairly solid.

Mo.

- --
Mo McKinlay
mmckinlay@gnu.org
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