Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4

Christophe Saout
2004-08-26T21:26:19Z

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Am Donnerstag, den 26.08.2004, 14:00 -0700 schrieb Martin J. Bligh:

> > "It's a feature".
> >
> > The S_ISDIR/S_ISREG tests show real information: it shows not only user
> > intent ("you should consider this a file, even if it has attributes"), but
> > also whether it is a directory or a container.
> >
> > And there's a real technical difference there: the streams contained
> > within a file are bound to that file. The files contained within a
> > directory are _independent_ of that directory. Big difference. HUGE
> > difference.
> >
> > So it's not confusing. If it tests as a file, you think of it as a file.
> > It may have attributes aka named streams associated with it, and you may
> > be able to open those attributes by treating the file as a directory, but
> > that doesn't really change the fact that it's a file.
> >
> > The _big_ difference is that when you can make the compound object _look_
> > like a directory, that means that you can now manage the attributes with
> > standard tools. They are still attributes, though.
>
> I think what you're saying is that they'd both return positive, right?

No. A file is still a file and S_ISREG will thus return false.
The application should just try to open it as a directory if it wants to
access the assiociated embedded attribute files. If the open fails,
well, it knows that the filesystem (or Linux version, whatever) doesn't
support this feature.

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