From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S269116AbUH0IX3 (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Aug 2004 04:23:29 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S268924AbUH0IXM (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Aug 2004 04:23:12 -0400 Received: from ppsw-0.csi.cam.ac.uk ([131.111.8.130]:49288 "EHLO ppsw-0.csi.cam.ac.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S268160AbUH0IUT (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Aug 2004 04:20:19 -0400 Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4 From: Anton Altaparmakov To: Linus Torvalds Cc: "Martin J. Bligh" , Rik van Riel , Diego Calleja , jamie@shareable.org, christophe@saout.de, vda@port.imtp.ilyichevsk.odessa.ua, christer@weinigel.se, spam@tnonline.net, Andrew Morton , wichert@wiggy.net, jra@samba.org, reiser@namesys.com, hch@lst.de, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, lkml , flx@namesys.com, reiserfs-list@namesys.com In-Reply-To: References: <45010000.1093553046@flay> Content-Type: text/plain Organization: University of Cambridge Computing Service, UK Message-Id: <1093594771.5994.1.camel@imp.csi.cam.ac.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.6 Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 09:19:32 +0100 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Cam-ScannerInfo: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/scanner/ X-Cam-AntiVirus: No virus found X-Cam-SpamDetails: Not scanned Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 21:54, Linus Torvalds wrote: > The S_ISDIR/S_ISREG tests show real information: it shows not only user > intent ("you should consider this a file, even if it has attributes"), but > also whether it is a directory or a container. > > And there's a real technical difference there: the streams contained > within a file are bound to that file. The files contained within a > directory are _independent_ of that directory. Big difference. HUGE > difference. > > So it's not confusing. If it tests as a file, you think of it as a file. > It may have attributes aka named streams associated with it, and you may > be able to open those attributes by treating the file as a directory, but > that doesn't really change the fact that it's a file. What about the attributes/named streams of a directory though? If you open it as a directory, you would get the files inside the directory. So how do you get at the attributes and named streams of the directory itself using this interface? Best regards, Anton -- Anton Altaparmakov (replace at with @) Unix Support, Computing Service, University of Cambridge, CB2 3QH, UK Linux NTFS maintainer / IRC: #ntfs on irc.freenode.net WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/, http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/