Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!sri-unix!hplabs!pyramid!prls!mips!winchester!djl From: djl@winchester.UUCP (Dan Levin) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: finding NFS dirs in csh? Message-ID: <33@winchester.UUCP> Date: Tue, 16-Dec-86 04:12:07 EST Article-I.D.: winchest.33 Posted: Tue Dec 16 04:12:07 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Dec-86 19:23:25 EST References: <772@gcc-milo.ARPA> <565@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <10398@sun.uucp> Lines: 22 In article <10398@sun.uucp>, guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) writes: > DIRECTORIES AREN'T FILES!!!!!!!! They may happen to be implemented on UNIX > in such a fashion that they can be treated as such in some cases, but they > can't always be treated as such. Here here. You cannot expect to find UNIX semantics in a heterogeneous environment. Now the humorous thing is that NFS goes to great lengths to virtualize the directory paradigm (as it clearly must), only to make the totally unsupportable and false assumption that the server is able to return a "cookie" that points to the "next" directory entry. This happens to work in UNIX, where removing a directory entry results in simply marking the entry as free. However, in some other systems, this is not the case. A counter-example is VMS, where removing a directory entry changes the physical size of the directory, thus invalidating any outstanding "cookies" being held by clients. -- ***dan {decwrl, glacier}!mips!djl mips!djl@{decwrl.dec.com, glacier.stanford.edu} It Isn't 75 degrees in New Jersey in November; I'm Glad To Be Home!