Are links as useful as they could be?

[guy at sun.UUCP]

> Many directory-reading programs (ls, tar, find) had to gain explicit
> knowledge of symbolic links anyway, the changes were even user-visible.

And many didn't.  If a new type of directory entry were added, *every*
directory-reading program would have to gain explicit knowledge of symbolic
links, and the change would be more complicated (with symbolic links as they
are, the *directory-reading code* didn't have to change, other than
mechanically replacing explicit "read"/"fread"/whatever calls with "readdir"
calls, etc.).  Furthermore, "fsck" would have to be taught about these new
kinds of directory entries (not just about new kinds of inodes, as was the
case with the current symbolic link implementation), as would a bunch of
other utilities that know about file system formats.

I presume they just decided the added benefits weren't worth the hassle.
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy at sun.com (or guy at sun.arpa)