[OT] strange interaction between open and cwd

Mel mwilson at the-wire.com
Mon May 3 23:34:21 EDT 2010


Grant Edwards wrote:

> I guess I've been using Unix for too long (almost 30 years).  I don't
> think I was consciously aware of a "one file, one name" paradigm.  Is
> that a characteristic of Dos, Windows or Mac filesystems?

Older and simpler filesystems used to combine the naming with the space 
allocation.  CP/M, and (IIRC) the GE/Honeywell mainframe systems I used to 
work with.  MS-DOS FAT filesystems might have supported multi-names but 
refused to administer them before long filenames were implemented as special 
cases.  I first ran into multi-names on Multics, where the Volume Table of 
Contents controlled disk space allocation and directories provided name-
keyed access to the VTOC entries.  Pretty much as Linux does now with 
directories and inodes.

	Mel.





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