[Oberon] filesystem with directories ?

[W B Hacker]

Rene Krywult wrote:

> Sorry, if this sounds harsh, but the below is nonsense. I bet that f.i. 
> our IBM 3270 (I work for Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG as a software 
> developer on IBM HOST)  has more files than every PC will ever have - 
> probably by more than a hundred times. Yet, there are NO directories 
> there. Nada. And it works perfectly well, in Batch-mode, in CICS 
> interactive mode and in ISPF. There is nothing that a hierarchical fs 
> can do, that large filenames cannot do also.
> 
> Rene
> 
>> And of course the directories are a must when the number of files
>> increases. In the days that Oberon fitted on a floppy disk, one
>> root-direcotry was fine. But now that it is about 100 MB with hundreds
>> of files, I think the time has come to use a more sophisticated file
>> system.
>>
>>
>>  
>>

At the end of the day, *most* (not all, but nearly so) of the 
*apparent* hierachical fs in current use are simply 
human-friendly modes of displaying what are in fact close to 
random-ordered collections of blocks - linked, indexed, or some 
combination of the above. Not really hierarchical under the covers.

Hierarchical simply doesn't 'map' directly to common physical 
storage. Not since torn-tape, anyway.

BTW - what do IBM's 'dotted' file names suggest to you?

All that asidee - hierarchical at-core, or for-display - or NOT 
what is needed is a *better* fs.  Or several.

FAT is a weak tool by any measure.

JMPO, but Plan9's concept & storage methodology done in Oberon 
instead of 'C' would be 'of interest'.

Bill