Ideas for changes to Unix filesystem
Michael Kandall
kandall at sgitokyo.nsg.sgi.com
Thu Feb 7 17:43:48 AEST 1991
In article <G2%&-2#@uzi-9mm.fulcrum.bt.co.uk> igb at fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) writes:
>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
I believe SVR4 has this. In SVR4's enhanced STREAMS, I believe you can
push STREAMS onto arbitrary file descriptors.
--
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Michael Kandall
Independent Consultant
Nihon Silicon Graphics
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