Re: Meta files for files without new interfaces

[Marcus Brinkmann <brinkmd@master.debian.org>]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 07:43:12AM +0200, Ognyan Kulev wrote:
> As a way to avoid new interfaces for dealing with properties, we can use
> the empty file name "".  So `cat index.html//mime/content-type' would 
> print `text/html'. 

We can't, for many reasons.  For one, the empty filename is used in the
Hurd protocol already for other stuff (I don't remember for what).
Second, this conflicts directly with POSIX, which says that // is
converterted to / on all lookups.

You will have to find an extension outside of POSIX.  This discussion came
up in the Austin group a year ago or so, where some people wanted to have
a reserved name space for such data, like ..., or whatever you can think of.

There are other groups interested into such an extension, maybe you can contact
them and work out a single strategy.  Eventually such an extension might even
become part of POSIX.

Thanks,
Marcus