4 ms·

Reparse points are basically more primitive directory-only symlinks, aren't they? Even the symlinks introduced in Vista are better... As for ADS: basically xat

by chungy 8y ago

Reparse points are basically more primitive directory-only symlinks, aren't they? Even the symlinks introduced in Vista are better... As for ADS: basically xattrs. They can be arbitrarily named and each xattr on ZFS can be up to 16EiB large (same as the primary bin for file content). (As an aside, they aren't fully usable on Linux since Linux itself imposes a 64KiB limit on an xattr's content -- but that's not a ZFS limitation)

ygra 8y ago
Reparse points are directory entries that are special and interpreted by the file system driver (or some other higher-level component that's not the file system itself). Directory junctions (which you mean here, I guess) are reparse points, as are symlinks and a bunch of other things.
otterley 8y ago
> Reparse points are basically more primitive directory-only symlinks, aren't they? Absolutely not! Reparse points are directories that are associated with drivers that extend the capability of the filesystem itself. They can be used to implement symlink-like behavior, but that's only a single use case that scratches the surface of their potential power. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/reparse-points https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/repa... for more information.
- chungy 8y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of that... terms seem to get interchanged in the Windows world often enough. It doesn't sound like it is really an inherent property of the file system, but just controlled by a driver. I don't see why they couldn't be made to work on any other file system, such as FAT or ZFS.