Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 10 May 2005 17:30:33 +0100 | From | Sean McGrath <> | Subject | Re: file as a directory |
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Peter Foldiak wrote:
>On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 15:53, Hans Reiser wrote: > > >>I agree with the below in that sometimes you want to see a collection of >>stuff as one file, and sometimes you want to see it as a tree, and that >>file format browsers can be integrated into file system browsers to look >>seamless to users. >> >>A quibble: A name is just a means to select a file; he is completely >>wrong to think that file browsers will eliminate filenames. >> >> > >Yes, even if you think of the whole file system as a single "file", you >need a way to select the bit you need, and you will use names for that >(and whether you call that a filename, a file-part name or an object >name doesn't really matter). > > The thing that interests me most is the difference (if any) between giving a stream of bytes an opaque name e.g. "Chapter 1 of my book.sxw" versus giving a stream of bytes a query expression that can also be considered an opaque name e.g. "/book/chapter[1] "
This is what the Russell/Frege descriptive theory of proper names applied to storage systems in a sense[1].
I've written about this stuff before on ITWorld (warning: chatty prose style ahead):
Fractals, Self Similarity, and the Whimsical Boundaries of XML Documents http://www.itworld.com/nl/xml_prac/04252002/
A study in XML culture and evolution http://www.itworld.com/nl/ebiz_ent/03252003/
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_name
Sean
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