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, ___ ___ |0| / \ =======O \ John Carter | _ | \ Rice Univerity | (_) | (( )) Houston, Texas |__#__| O/ \\O | | /+ -+. ARPA: retrac@rice.edu [N] = | CSNET: retrac@rice.edu [B] // // UUCP: {Backbone or Internet site}!rice!retrac [A] )) \\ |_| =/ /___\ >>> Go Rockets! <<<