unix file system

[John P. Nelson]

>> Some of us at Digital think we have found a basic problem with the  UNIX
>> file  system  for FORTRAN.  The problem is that there is no place to put
>> various kinds of information about  the  contents  of  the  file.   More
>> specifically:

>                                         There is really no reasonable
>way to put this into the filesysem itself without a lot of re-writing,
>and I doubt many people think it is worth the trouble. The fact is that
>fortran is a dying language, and it would be silly to make unix more
>friendly to fortran at the expense of more trouble for people who use
>modern languages.
>
>	Wayne

Well, this attitude is a bit extreme, but I really don't see why any of
this is necessary.  Why not have the fortran format file have a header
describing the data contained within, and have the header started by a
four byte magic number.  Magic numbers are used now to indicate that a
file is a binary executable, why not have a new magic number that describes
the file as a fortran file?

The argument that most (non-fortran) programs do not need the proposed
extra filesystem information applies to information stored in a header as
well.  This would put the extra burden of responsibility on the fortran
library, which would have to recognize ordinary files, and parse them
differently than from "funny" files.  This same extra step would have to
take place anyway, except that the information would come from the
filesystem, instead of from the file header.

What advantage is there to having this information be "out-of-band" (i.e. not
part of the file itself)?

John P. Nelson (decvax!genrad!john)