Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd

[Tom Bachmann]

Filip Brcic wrote:
> > Someone already came up with this idea. It is actually quite nice, but
> > the problem is that POSIX only specifies one reserved character, '/',
> > and thus foo.tar.bz2:as_dir is a valid name. So such a file could exist.
>
>
> Well, it could exist, but it probably will not. If it does exist, the system 
> can decide to use foo.tar.bz2:as_dir1, foo.tar.bz2:as_dir2, ... until it 
> finds the name that doesn't exist.

But this is not obvious to the user.

> I would like to see foo.tar.bz2 as a simple file when I do ls. And if I do cd 
> foo.tar.bz2, then I would like to see it as directory. If that cannot be 
> achieved, then it is IMHO better left as file.

You hurdish cd will probably manage to retrieve the directory facet (but 
this becomes relatively much if you allow this on the complete path, not 
just the last part of it), so this probably works. Still, the question 
is how legacy apps can be incorporated.

> I can always do mkdir foo ; 
> settrans -ca foo /hurd/tarfs foo.tar.bz2 or something like that, to read the 
> archive.

That is explicit binding, as proposed (though you do it the other way 
around).
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