make DOS a filesystem?

[Guy Harris]

Submitted-by: guy at auspex.uucp (Guy Harris)

>Using the System V file system switch (or vnodes, or xyznodes
>or whatever ...) would allow any utility to operate on any MS/DOS
>file on the MS/DOS partition without the need for copying.

*Does* allow, at least in the case of vnodes under at least some SunOS
releases; Sun Consulting sells (or, at least at one point, sold; dunno
if they still do) a DOS file system for SunOS, which Steve Kleiman did
as a sort of "proof of concept".  Other vendors may have done the same.

I'm not sure what all this has to do with UNIX standards, though, as
none of the existing UNIX standards specify the on-disk format of UNIX
file systems (thank goodness!), they just specify the interface to
functions that manipulate files.  I don't think the DOS file system can
fully support the POSIX semantics of those functions in any case, given
the file name limitations, the lack of full UNIX-style permission bits,
etc., etc.. 

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 151