On Sun, Aug 29, 2004 at 02:36:50AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
quoted text
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, Hans Reiser wrote:
> >>I object to openat().....
> >
> >Sound slike you object to O_XATTRS, not openat() itself.
> >
> >Realize that openat() works independently of any special streams, it's
> >fundamentally a "look up name starting from this file" (rather than
> >"starting from root" or "starting from cwd").
>
> well, isn't that namespace fragmentation by definition?  If you can't go
> 
> cat filenameA/metas/permissions > filenameB/metas/permissions
> 
> find / -exec cat {}/permissions \; | grep 4777 | wc -l

My apologies if this question has been raised (and answered) elsewhere.
I tried to keep up with the flamefest/discussion but it wasn't always
possible.

How would you do it for directories without making certain names
illegal? ie taking the above you'd do:

cat dirA/metas/permissions > dirB/metas/permissions

But how does that distinguish an access to the metas for dirA and dirB
from an access to a file called permissions within the metas directories
of dirA and dirB?

I think what Linus is trying to do, as far as naming, is create a
consistant access scheme that works for all types of objects in the
fs without making certain names illegal (and with plugins, those
names are not even a fixed thing I believe).

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, ofcourse. :)

-- 
    Red herrings strewn hither and yon.