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> The file interface is somewhat limited though And so? The mantra says "everything is a file", not "everything is only a file". You can provide stream acces
by enriquto 4y ago
> The file interface is somewhat limited though
And so? The mantra says "everything is a file", not "everything is only a file". You can provide stream access to everything, and then more advanced access to some particular resources.
- layer8 4y agoThe problem is that everything below the file surface is proprietary, so to speak, and that the file interface doesn’t give you a standard way of discovering the file format or (for command pipes) the commands it understands. What’s missing is a standard way of querying schema information about files/pipes. In addition, like in the TFA use-case, not just individual files have schemata, but whole directories and directory trees have. Those are not communicated by the file system, but have to be known out-of-band for each specific purpose. Providing just a generic interface cuts two ways: On the one hand, you can represent anything, but on the other hand, you don’t know what anything represents without additional information (metadata).