pathnames [Re: files, printers, etc. [Re: The feel of a Lisp

[Chris Bitmead uid(x22068)]

>Right... Pathnames should be purely user-level things; we traverse
>a directory graph to find an object, but as soon as the system gets your
>choice, it asks for that object's "persistent reference handle" (an
>opaque object which might be something like "host IP:inode #" or a
>nice location-independent ID allowing for object migration, depending
>on the networking layer, and invisible to the application), for the
>simple reason that files can be renamed. 

And then you're screwed when you create a new version of the object
which would have a new ":inode #"

>The file hierachy is a 
>user-level structure, full stop.