On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 2:46 PM, James A. Donald <[email protected]> wrote: > > Tahoe's globally unique filenames are long and incomprehensible.
Filenames are not globally unique in Tahoe-LAFS. This is a misunderstanding that I've heard before. Let me see if I can explain it better, and once I (or someone) hammers out a good explanation then let's add it to the FAQ. James, have you used Tahoe-LAFS yet? Here are some file names which are emitted from the "tahoe ls" command. (This is an actual cut-and-paste of my actual command-line input and output.) $ tahoe ls demowiki klog my_private_iCal new_privwrite_audio privwriteaudio pubwritemusic research rolling_stone scratch subdir-for-Matt-Jadud tahoelafs_deps videos $ tahoe ls -l klog/ -r-- 86379 Dec 11 18:01 Map_of_Paths_Not_To_Take-thumb.jp2 -r-- 49249 Dec 11 18:09 Map_of_Paths_Not_To_Take-thumb.jpg -r-- 4651055 Dec 11 16:11 Map_of_Paths_Not_To_Take.jpg -r-- 908027 Jun 28 2010 blog.html -r-- 152478 Jun 28 2010 blog.xml -r-- 4724 Dec 01 23:40 button-compact-static-100x17.png -r-- 350104 Jun 28 2010 empty.html Filenames are not globally unique and can be whatever string you choose. Caps are globally unique, but caps are more like inode numbers than like filenames. Tahoe-LAFS offers the option of using caps directly in the command-line instead of using filenames, but it is optional. For example the read-cap to the directory called "klog" in the transcript above is URI:DIR2-RO:ixqhc4kdbjxc7o65xjnveoewym:5x6lwoxghrd5rxhwunzavft2qygfkt27oj3fbxlq4c6p45z5uneq, so the following command shows the same directory as the previous command: $ tahoe ls -l URI:DIR2-RO:ixqhc4kdbjxc7o65xjnveoewym:5x6lwoxghrd5rxhwunzavft2qygfkt27oj3fbxlq4c6p45z5uneq -r-- 86379 Dec 11 18:01 Map_of_Paths_Not_To_Take-thumb.jp2 -r-- 49249 Dec 11 18:09 Map_of_Paths_Not_To_Take-thumb.jpg -r-- 4651055 Dec 11 16:11 Map_of_Paths_Not_To_Take.jpg -r-- 908027 Jun 28 2010 blog.html -r-- 152478 Jun 28 2010 blog.xml -r-- 4724 Dec 01 23:40 button-compact-static-100x17.png -r-- 350104 Jun 28 2010 empty.html (Again, this is an actual transcript of my bash session.) This is sort of like what you would get if your shell allowed (but did not require) "ls --inode=10342" to list the directory stored in that inode in your local filesystem. This wouldn't be that useful for a local filesystem, but it is potentially more useful for Tahoe-LAFS, since the word "klog" is meaningful only within a certain context -- a certain directory -- but the capability has the same meaning everywhere -- from any context on any machine. Again, this feature is optional. The first bash transcript above includes no visible, in-lined capabilities and yet is a complete, useful interaction. Regards, Zooko _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list [email protected] http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
