path module

[Bengt Richter]

On 25 Jul 2003 20:48:07 -0500, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 2003-07-25 at 20:10, Van Gale wrote:
>> Interesting, I started a project modifying Jason's Path module to work 
>> on subversion trees as well.  I didn't get too far before putting the 
>> project on a back-burner so I'm glad to hear someone else is thinking 
>> the same way :)
>> 
>> My extensions to Path included an additional argument to "open" that 
>> included a version number, and a mechanism for retrieving some kind of 
>> "metadata" associated with the file.
>
>It's interesting that different kinds of filesystems (or
>filesystem-like-things) have very different kinds of metadata
>available.  Like last-modified, last-accessed, inode (identity),
>version, title, branch, mimetype, log message, etc.  And then there's
>information that's not quite metadata... like <link ref> data, or the
>volume name, the host, etc.
>
>I feel like a common interface for these different filesystems should
>somehow degrade well in terms of metadata, or expedite introspection in
>some fashion.
>
IMO a mounted file system per se should be represented by an object, and then
that object should have the methods to deliver generic or file-system-specific
file and path and walking objects etc.

After all, even NT can see DOS partitions, vs NTFS vs raw floppy
and HD images of potentially foreign formats. And my slackware linux sees one DOS partition
that can be alternately booted, but can read from slackware via a mount.

Cf. another post in this thread (which didn't get any response ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter