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Re: A strange behaviour of a File property

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On 11/15/2011 9:17 AM, Andreas Leitgeb wrote:
> Eric Sosman<esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid>  wrote:
>> On 11/14/2011 12:38 PM, Andreas Leitgeb wrote:
>>> [... concerning VMS ...]
>>> How recent was your porting activity? (months, years or decades?)
>> [ Answer: essentially last century ]
> Do you think, the same management would make
> that decisions again nowadays for nowadays'
> marketshare of VMS?

     Would they decide to sell product on one of the most popular
platforms in their ecosystem?  I hope so!

     Would they decide to drop a platform because it would mostly
disappear within, oh, sixty-plus financial quarters?  I hope not!

> Anyway, I agree that using the abstraction that File provides
> is principially better than doing one's own path-arithmetics.
> I also agree, that providing the pathSeparator impedes the
> abstraction.

> Sometimes, abstraction also gets into your way: how would you
> model a relative path that starts with going one or more levels
> up?

	File child = ...;
	File parent = child.getParent();
	File grandparent = parent.getParent();
	...

> I think to remember that MacOS (before 10) didn't have
> such a concept.  Did(/does) VMS?

     Can't answer for MacOS.  In VMS, sure: A file or directory was
either at the topmost level of its file system or it was contained
in a parent directory, and you could find the parent, and so on.

>>       <Falling into a prophetic trance>: The year 2014 will see the
>> introduction of a brand-new paradigm for thinking about persistent
>> storage, one in which names cannot be so trivially encoded.  By 2017,
>> systems based on this new scheme will have swept away all the naive
>> file-naming notions of Unix, MS-DOS, VMS, AIX, and VM; even URI's
>> will be on their way out.  Will Java be part of the problem, or part
>> of the solution?
>
> A very good argument.  I doubt, however, that even those using the
> current File API in the cleanest possible way, will necessarily be
> fit for those future filesystem changes.

     True: Java has lots of other built-in limitations that make it
unsuitable or at least uncomfortable for "advanced" (or even "large")
files.  I guess the Java answer is "We'll pretend the super-files are
databases and make you go through adapters to get at them ..."

     </smiley></rant> Oh, did I forget to open these?

-- 
Eric Sosman
esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid

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A strange behaviour of a File property alelvb@inwind.it - 2011-11-11 05:45 -0800
  Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-11 07:34 -0800
    Re: A strange behaviour of a File property alelvb@inwind.it - 2011-11-11 09:28 -0800
      Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-11 14:17 -0800
        Re: A strange behaviour of a File property alelvb@inwind.it (Alexo) - 2011-11-12 15:04 +0100
          Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-12 09:15 -0500
            Re: A strange behaviour of a File property alelvb@inwind.it (Alexo) - 2011-11-12 16:17 +0100
              Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Zlatko Đurić <zladuric@gmail.com> - 2011-11-12 16:09 +0100
              Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-12 10:13 -0500
  Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-11 16:25 +0000
    Re: A strange behaviour of a File property alelvb@inwind.it - 2011-11-11 09:42 -0800
      Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-11-11 13:24 -0500
    Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-11 14:13 -0800
    Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-11 20:38 -0500
      Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-12 03:21 +0000
        Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-12 08:26 -0500
          Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-12 22:09 +0000
            Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-11-12 17:40 -0500
              Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-13 01:28 +0000
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-11-12 20:42 -0500
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-13 12:15 +0000
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-11-13 12:42 +0000
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-13 13:06 +0000
        Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-11-12 17:25 -0500
          Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-13 01:15 +0000
            Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-11-12 20:40 -0500
              Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-13 12:42 +0000
            Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-12 21:11 -0500
              Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-13 20:50 +0000
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-14 08:18 -0500
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-14 17:38 +0000
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-14 21:51 -0500
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-15 14:17 +0000
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-15 22:20 -0500
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-16 12:14 +0000
                Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-16 08:10 -0500
      Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2011-11-11 19:46 -0800
      Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Owen Jacobson <angrybaldguy@gmail.com> - 2011-11-14 00:24 -0500
        Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-13 22:00 -0800
  Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-11-12 05:00 -0800
    Re: A strange behaviour of a File property Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-11-12 09:15 -0500

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