In article <76ai9b$ion5@news.kvaerner.com>, "Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen" wrote: > > dewarr@my-dejanews.com wrote > > I don't think there is a particular need to exclude > anybody. Most OSes has similar semantics with regards to > drives, directories and file names. The problem is that > syntax is different. It is easy to create an intermediate > description of these things so that a program might > reason about its environment in a sensible manner. All > that is needed is a translator to and from that > representation. That's misleading. In the case of VMS, the file versions add a completely new dimension, and require different thinking. For example, an editor is expected to create a new version of the file being edited, and leave the original input file completely unchanged. This is quite a different fundamental semantics from a normal unix style editor. Version numbers on files are pervasive and need to be thought through carefully. For example, if you change the name of a file, does the version change? If you copy a file, is the version number preserved? All such questions have reasonable answers, but the questions themselves just do not arise in the context of a unix style file system without version numbers. I am not saying that it is impossible to take this into account in a general design, but saying that the issue is purely syntactic misses the boat! -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own