files, printers, etc. [Re: The feel of a LispM/List of running machines]

[Mike McDonald]

>Date: Fri, 02 May 1997 12:05:39 +1000
>From: "Chris Bitmead uid(x22068)" <Chris.Bitmead@alcatel.com.au>
>Subject: Re: files, printers, etc. [Re: The feel of a LispM/List of running
>To: lispos@math.gatech.edu

>IMHO this is a bad idea. One of the things that Unix gets right over
>the NT/DOS world is avoiding this machine:file or a:file syntax.

  Oh, what's this /hosts/machine/... naming stuff then?

>Files should be located where they logically belong. If application
>FooBar happens to be on machine "tiger", I shouldn't have to know
>that. Besides, it might be moved onto machine "lion" one day.

>I, as a dumb user just want to type ">applications>FooBar" and have it
>found.

  That's what logical pathnames are for! Then you can refer to
FooBar:>my-file.bar and you'll get the right one from where ever it's
located at. BTW, it could just as easily be a way of representing a
query to your persistant object store, ie the objects "name" could be 
FooBar:>my-file.bar.

>I propose that everything in the file system is an object. Some
>objects have names associated with them like conventional file
>systems. Some don't because they're not needed.

  A persistant object store is a useful construct but it doesn't
entirely replace supporting file systems. If nothing else, we need
filesystems for supporting all those other machines like Unix, DOS,
and CDROMs. I hope we have both someday.


>I think everything should be an object in LispOS nirvana. Not to do
>this is to lose about 50% of the advantage of having a LispOS.

  Yup, and some of those objects should represent "traditional" file
systems.

  Mike McDonald
  mikemac@engr.sgi.com