Ideas for changes to Unix filesystem

[Ian G Batten]

In article <BZS.91Feb4003139 at world.std.com> bzs at world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
> Think of fixed length record files and inserting into them, it would
> be nice to be able to just copy/munge the block numbers rather than
> the data.

What's needed is a version of streams for filesystems.  With Multics,
the One True Operating System, you could attach modules (== push
modules) such as vfile_ to provide additional functionality over and
above that which you got from initiate_segment_ and its friends.  What
would be nice with Unix would be ISAM, record mode, whatever modules you
could push on top of the mmap interface.  Once you can map files into
your address space most things can be done on top of that.

ian