pathnames

[Chris Bitmead uid]

>I think we should base all design decisions on experience, where available.
>I vote that any persistent object have a default versioning that is, at 
>a minimum, very crude, just based on version numbers where the accessing
>the most current version requires no specification of version at all.  

I find the possibility of every persistent object having versioning
numbers, including cons cells, and so on, to be pretty silly,
semantically and efficiency-wise.

What use are you going to make of a cons cell with a version number?

>This
>would be like the file system versioning available in VMS, which I claim is
>superior (as a default) to the lack of versioning.  

A traditional file system, including VMS, is a whole different kettle
of fish to a persistent store.

>Of course, it should be
>possible to defeat this default versioning by setting parameters specifiying
>the maximum number of versions to be maintained (setting this to 1 would
>mean no versioning).

Sounds like fun that every time you create an innocent little object
you have to go and switch off this dratted versioning thing.