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

[Alaric B. Williams]

> >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 #"

I'd call that a broken implementation! Under my scheme, all the versions
are just aspects of the same object, and thus the same "inode number".
That "inode number" refers to the set of version of that document.
 
ABW 
--
Alaric B. Williams (alaric@abwillms.demon.co.uk)

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