file attributes

[Erik M. van der Poel]

> 	Let's say you have a mailbox, and you want it to be read by
> /usr/ucb/mail.  You put as the first line:
> #!/usr/ucb/mail -f

What if I have an ordinary text file (say, a README)? Some people like
to use `less', some people use `vi', and yet other people use `emacs'.
The README file may be accessed by many different people, since Unix
is a multi-user system.

In this case (i.e. README), it might be better to just say that this
is a text file, in the file attributes (i.e. the metadata (the data is
the file itself)). Then the `user agent' can look at the metadata, and
do the right thing, which may depend on the user's preferences.


> 	Unfortunately, in the second case, Mail does not understand what
> the #! is doing at the begining of its file, and it gets pissed off.

Indeed. Many programs will suddenly stop working if we start adding
standardized metadata to the files themselves. That's why we need the
new system call.
-
-- 
Erik M. van der Poel                                      erik at sra.co.jp
Software Research Associates, Inc., Tokyo, Japan     TEL +81-3-3234-2692