[ale] File Comments

[Danny Cox]

Aaron,

On Sun, 2002-06-23 at 22:26, aaron wrote:
> One of the many nice little features of the Amiga systems I use is the 
> FILE COMMENT field in the file system: In addition to the (case retaining 
	<snip>
> 
> If recollection serves (since I so rarely have to suffer M$ products), 
> there is a similar File Comment field under MeSsyDOS and its decendants. 
> However, I'm also remembering that, ever since Winblows '95, the File 
> Comment space has been usurped as a hack work around for M$DOS's crippled 
> 8.3 file name limits.
	<snip>
> I guess I'm just trying to be certain I haven't been seriously 
> overlooking something for the past decade... so is anyone aware of a File 
> Comment / File Descriptor facility in any of the *nix file systems or is 

	Any filesystem that has extended attributes could handle that.  XFS is
one.  Ext3 MAY have it.  ACLs are sometimes (usually?) implemented as
extended attributes.

	XFS, with which I'm more familiar, can have as many EAs as you wish. 
They consist of a name ("COMMENT"), which has a maximum size, but very
large, something like 255 bytes, and the value, which may be anything
(even binary).  The value also has a fixed size, but much larger, on the
order of 4096 bytes.

-- 
kernel, n.: A part of an operating system that preserves the
medieval traditions of sorcery and black art.

Danny


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