> From: Hans Reiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > these problems will not exist significantly in reality. Look at netapps > and snapshots and clearcase and other filesystems, I remember wondering > if .snapshot could be a problem when netapps were new and it was never a > problem.
Notice though that that filename begins with ".", not a letter. This causes all programs to treat it specially. Also note that that filename is nine characters long, and therefore making a purely random collision less likely by more than four orders of magnitude. > People who find it is a problem can #define it to something else. If 5 > people bother to do so, I will be surprised. > > Many languages have reserved keywords..... I REJECT THIS! I believe Ada is almost the only programming language without reserved words. The thing is a filesystem is NOT a programming language! It is designed to handle files with arbitrary names, no matter how odd. Only programmers deal with C, end users must deal with filesystem limitations. > From: cami <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Not sure if anyone has bothered to check if this would > impose the limitation that people are worried about. > > From a quick glance, none of the linux distro's have > ever had a file / directory called "metas" before. > `metas` isn't even a real a word anyway (at least not > an english word) so the chances of it being a big issue > are very very small.. freshmeat.net's search shows not > even one hit for the word metas and that pretty much > the majority of linux/coding related projects.. Good point, search engines as evidence. The problem is you're only looking at distributions, which are going to be highly similar and you're completely missing end users. So let us take this to a full search engine and see what turns up... Hmm, roughly a million hits, let us look at a few samples: http://www.metas.ch/ http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html http://www.metas.com.br/ http://metas.enfermeria21.com/ http://www.metas.com.mx/ Okay, out of one million hits, we randomly look at ten, and half feature "metas" in the URL somewhere. Going the other direction, Google indexes roughly 4 billion pages. If we guess the above search was representative, roughly 500,000 pages will include "metas" somewhere in the URL, possibly only as a hostname, but somewhere. So we've managed to collect 1 out of every 10,000 pages that Google indexes. Though we don't have a direct proof, I hope I've come close enough to scare you. Hans, what will it take for you to change your mind? -- (\___(\___(\______ --=> 8-) EHM <=-- ______/)___/)___/) \ ( | [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP 8881EF59 | ) / \_ \ | _____ -O #include <stddisclaimer.h> O- _____ | / _/ \___\_|_/82 04 A1 3C C7 B1 37 2A*E3 6E 84 DA 97 4C 40 E6\_|_/___/
