Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ut-sally!rice!titan!retrac
From: retrac@titan.rice.edu (John Carter)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: incorporating processes into file systems
Message-ID: <494@ra.rice.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 87 22:48:53 GMT
References: <1572@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Reply-To: retrac@rice.edu (John Carter)
Organization: Rice University, Houston
Lines: 37

In article <1572@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> jack@cs.hw.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>I believe there has been at least one OS that manages the naming of
>processes and files in the same way - so 'ps' would become yet another
>option to 'ls'. I forget which. Can anyone enlighten me? References?

    First, let me apologize in advance if this is redundant.  Our usenet
machine was down for a few days and we got pretty far behind.

    The V System ("Vee" system, out of Stanford, not to be mistaken for
System V Unix) has what are known as "contexts".  For the file server, they
are more or less equivalent to directories.  However, other servers can
maintain their own contexts which can be queried much the same way you can
query the file server.  For example, you can to a "listdir [team/local",
which prints the context maintained by the local teamserver.  The output
of this basically the same as a Unix ps.  "listdir" is the same command that
you use to list directories (thus the name).

    V system has a naming protocol which among other things is used to
define how queries on contexts can be made (I might have this a little
wrong since I haven't dealt with the naming protocol much).  This is what
allows diverse servers to maintain their own concepts of contexts which
can be accessed through a single unified approach.

Hope this helps,

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