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Re: file as a directory
Peter Foldiak wrote:
On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 15:53, Hans Reiser wrote:
I agree with the below in that sometimes you want to see a collection of
stuff as one file, and sometimes you want to see it as a tree, and that
file format browsers can be integrated into file system browsers to look
seamless to users.
A quibble: A name is just a means to select a file; he is completely
wrong to think that file browsers will eliminate filenames.
Yes, even if you think of the whole file system as a single "file", you
need a way to select the bit you need, and you will use names for that
(and whether you call that a filename, a file-part name or an object
name doesn't really matter).
The thing that interests me most is the difference (if any) between
giving a stream of bytes an opaque name e.g. "Chapter 1 of my book.sxw"
versus giving a stream of bytes a query expression that can also be
considered an opaque name e.g.
"/book/chapter[1] "
This is what the Russell/Frege descriptive theory of proper names
applied to storage systems in a sense[1].
I've written about this stuff before on ITWorld (warning: chatty prose
style ahead):
Fractals, Self Similarity, and the Whimsical Boundaries of XML Documents
http://www.itworld.com/nl/xml_prac/04252002/
A study in XML culture and evolution
http://www.itworld.com/nl/ebiz_ent/03252003/
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_name
Sean
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