Re: [boost] Re: [filesystem] new functions proposals

From: Edouard Poor (edouard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-04-22 04:50:25

> >> Note too that on Windows/NTFS, names like
'c:/foo/bar.baz.blip:blat' are
> >> legal.  The 'extension' is '.blip', not '.baz.blip' and not
> >> '.baz.blip:blat'.
> 
> > :blat ???
> > 
> > 1. I have no clue what that would mean
> 
> I, too, had not clue about this until now.

It's been in NTFS since the first implementations.
 
> > 2. Is there any handling of :blat in any way shape or form in the
file
> > system stuff?  I don't remember seeing any description of that
case...
> 
> Does those "alternate streams" belong to filesystem library at all? 
> For one thing, the ':' symbols is not allowed anywhere except for root
name.
> For another thing, on all systems but NTFS, "bar.baz.blip:blat" would
be
> considered as having "blip:blat" extension, and making the function
behave
> differently on NTFS is confusing. Lastly, the 'extension' function is
> supposed to do only syntax transformation, but to tell if you're on
Fat32
> or NFTS you'd need to ask operating system...

It's like having different path specifiers on different OS's. It really
should be handled. There are plenty of other filesystems that support
streams or attributes or other theoretically similar mechanisms. HFS &
HFS+, XFS, JFS, Be OS I think, NTFS as above, etc etc.

The first step would be to survey the filesystems out there and build up
a list of implementations. Are extended attributes the same as alternate
streams? How are the streams named? What limits are placed on their
content?

Then from there you can come up with a suitable implementation.

> - Volodya

Cheers,
Edouard.