[plug] Alternative Data Streams (From OT)

[Craig Ringer]

> On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 10:05:56AM +0800, sscott at iinet.net.au wrote:
> | AFAIK, nope. The Linux VFS doesnt support it.
> 
> I see no reason why it shouldn't.

While I imagine it could, it'd be hard to fit into the existing 
namespace. How do you ID a stream - you can't re-use any of the existing 
legal characters. I'd probably do it by allowing the user to "cd" into a 
directory, reiser4 style, if I had to:

	dir1/dir2/file/stream

After all, given the wide set of allowed filename chars in UNIX there 
isn't anything you can borrow for the purpose. Anyway, IMHO "sub-files" 
makes more sense anyway and eliminates the problems NT has with 
alternate streams being invisible to apps. Reiser4 should make this 
possible with the right plugin(s).

> Didn't Craig give an example earlier
> of how the Linux NTFS driver supported it?

Nope. I was talking about the smbfs driver, which accesses NT 
filesystems over the network. I expect it works because smbfs doesn't 
care how the remote system interprets the path - it asks for 
'filename:blah' and the remote system interprets that as a request for a 
stream.

Craig Ringer

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