From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S266328AbUBQQzG (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:55:06 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S266332AbUBQQzF (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:55:05 -0500 Received: from 1-2-2-1a.has.sth.bostream.se ([82.182.130.86]:30386 "EHLO K-7.stesmi.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266328AbUBQQyl (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:54:41 -0500 Message-ID: <40324741.4040707@stesmi.com> Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 17:54:25 +0100 From: Stefan Smietanowski User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linus Torvalds CC: Marc Lehmann , Jamie Lokier , viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk, Linux kernel Subject: Re: UTF-8 practically vs. theoretically in the VFS API References: <200402150107.26277.robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> <20040216183616.GA16491@schmorp.de> <20040216200321.GB17015@schmorp.de> <20040216222618.GF18853@mail.shareable.org> <20040217071448.GA8846@schmorp.de> <20040217161111.GE8231@schmorp.de> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi Linus. >>Because there is a fundamental difference between file contents and >>filenames. Filenames are supposed to be text. > > I think this is actually the fundamental point where we disagree. > > You think of filenames as something the user types in, and that is > "readable text". And I don't. > > I think the filenames are just ways for a _program_ to look up stuff, and > the human readability is a secondary thing (it's "polite", but not a > fundamental part of their meaning). > > So the same way I think text is good in config files and I dislike binary > blobs (hey, look at /proc), I think readable filenames are good. But that > doesn't mean that they have to be readable. I can well imagine encoding > meta-data in the filename for some database that uses the filesystem as > its backing store and generates files for large blobs. And then there > would be little if any "goodness" to keeping the filenames readable. Just look at Mozilla's cache... They may have turned the blob into ascii but it's still a blob. // Stefan