file attributes

[Walter Smith]

One existing implementation of "parallel" file attribute areas:

Every file on the Apple Macintosh has two "forks": the data fork, which
corresponds to what everyone normally thinks of as a "file", and the
resource fork, where resources are kept.  The forks are accessed in exactly
the same way, only you get the data fork descriptor when you Open() and the
resource fork descriptor when you OpenResFile().  The resource fork is often
used to store file attributes.  For example, Apple's text file editor stores
information about your favorite font and size for a file in the file's
resource fork.  There is a higher-level interface to the resource data
(called the Resource Manager) that provides for giving resources names,
types, and ID numbers and adding, deleting, and modifying resources.

-- 
      Walter Smith, CS undergraduate, Carnegie-Mellon University
uucp: ...!seismo!cmu-cs-k!wrs		       arpa: wrs at cmu-cs-k.ARPA
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