Re: Directories/Files

[Vince Hodges <vhodges home com>]

>>>>> "Calum" == Calum Benson <calum.benson@sun.com> writes:

    Calum> Sean Middleditch wrote:
 
    >> Hmm, I've never used an Amiga, but that sounds a bit nice.  How
    >> does the system differentiate between the labels and actualy
    >> directories?

The Amiga did not have a single rooted filesystem, instead there was a
system table of devices connected to the system (like DOS).  Sort of
like /dev. You could refer to devices by the names in the table like
so: 'copy file.txt prt:'.  

The really nice thing was the user could create 'logical' volumes and
add them to the system table.  This was done with a CLI command
'assign'.  eg, 'assign source: hd1:home/work/source'  Then you could
refer to source: as if it was another device on the system (cd there,
copy to/from it etc).

I this using advFS once (badly) and would be pretty straight forward
to do a gnome-vfs handle to do the same thing.  I think it needs to go
deeper than that though, ie the shell needs to be aware of these
logical assignments.  And is it really necessary?  Symbolic links more
or less do the same thing.

Sorry if this is muddled (and for being mostly offtopic!).


-- 
Vince Hodges                             "Beware geeks bearing diffs"
vhodges@home.com 
http://members.home.com/vhodges/