Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: net.news,net.bugs.uucp Subject: Re: UUCP filenames Message-ID: <3132@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Fri, 5-Aug-83 16:04:06 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.3132 Posted: Fri Aug 5 16:04:06 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Aug-83 16:04:06 EDT References: <89@vortex.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 26 There is one serious problem with Lauren's D-file naming scheme, and I dearly hope Lauren is not going to imbed it into any production version of uucp. The problem is, it makes the collision problem WORSE. (Since this was the biggest objection to the old naming scheme, this seems a backward step.) With Lauren's scheme, outgoing files and incoming files on a given site have (potentially) the same names! A file named "D.vortex..." on vortex may be either an outgoing file waiting for transmission or an incoming file waiting for disposal, and only the quasirandom sequence numbering prevents collisions. This may not be too serious a problem for a leaf node, but for a site that does heavy relaying it's a disaster. Please DON'T DO IT! More generally, some of the naming problems could be solved by working with the character position now used only for grade letters, but only if it is a network-wide standard. Could we PLEASE have an end to surprise unilateral changes to things that affect compatibility across the whole network?!? There have already been some very unfortunate precedents set. If we keep on this way, we'll soon be split into a set of incompatible subnets that break each other's uucps when they try to talk to each other. Please, people, show some consideration: think for a moment about compatibility and about the problems other people will have before you implement your latest bright idea, no matter how wonderful it is. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry