Re: Filetype identification in gmc

[mawarkus t-online de (Matthias Warkus)]

+++ Wed, Aug 04, 1999 at 01:56:56PM +0200 +++
Per Erik Stendahl e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> 
> Hi.
> 
> It seems to me (and I always reserve the right to be wrong) that
> gmc determines the type of a file solely on the extension it has.
> I don't like this, it is not powerful enough and it seems like
> just-another-MSDOS-ripoff. I think that filetype identification
> should be able to use at least filename patterns (like extensions),
> locations and file contents. Take for instance the .doc extension.
> Is it a text document? Is it an MS Word document? Is it an airplane?
> 
> I don't know exactly how the 'file' command determines the type of
> a file, maybe we could use that.

The problem here is that it doesn't scale, if you've got a directory
with 10,000 files, you need to do 10,000 calls to file, which spawns
10,000 processes one after another and does 10,000 open() calls.

Over a network, this could take hours.

mawa
-- 
They're expending enough energy just taking in oxygen on a daily
basis, you think they have any synaptic activity left over to devote
to Intelligent Thought?
                          -- Synth F. Oberheim <synth@yenta.alb.nm.us>