Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Sat, 11 Feb 2006 00:38:42 +0100,
Patrick Negre <address@hidden> wrote:
> Ok, but i want my ls command to list files, i will be very confuse if one of 
> my file is listed as many time as the number of translators set on it.
> I expect my command "rm f" to remove a file not a view.
> 
> I want my system to be sufficently smart to understand that "cd foo.tar.gz" 
> mean i wanna browse foo.tar.gz, and after execution i expect   to be in 
> "foo.tar.gz/" as i asked. ( under the condition foo.tar.gz is browsable .
> 
> I expect, when i command a "cat whatever", that the system will understand 
> that i wanna access "whatever" as a file.
> 
> I want to have a simple way to access a file with a non default view, like 
> ( it's an example ) : "cat whatever::binary"

I want to add something to what Jonathan said.  You can have all
these, but not using the standard POSIX/Unix shell, cat, and cd
commands.

You _can_ build a shell in which you can do the above.  In
implementing this patrick-shell, you will find that you have to
compromise _something_.  In the same way that you have to compromise
something if implementing similar functionality in a graphical shell
like a file browser.  For example, your introduction of a "::" special
character is a compromise.

This is not a bad thing per se.  It's just a consequence of what POSIX
says about files and directories, and how Unix implements them
traditionally (which has a consequence on how applications interpret
POSIX).

Thanks,
Marcus