| From: | Alexander G. M. Smith |
| Date: | 21 Oct 2000 at 15:19:11 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Extensions and Types |
John Harris <john@pulsarinteractive.com> wrote on
Thu, 19 Oct 2000 11:09:21 -0700:
> It wasn't clear to me from the article where the type info
> is actually stored in the BeOS filesystem. If it can be
> accessed efficiently, then I'd say they 'solved' the problem.
The extra info is stored the same as regular data. Each
attribute can be as large as a regular file. If it is small
(the usual case) then it can get stored in the inode block
describing the file (1K minimum block size). If it doesn't
fit then it spills over into extra data blocks just like
real data does. Anyway, filetype is stored in an attribute
called "BEOS:TYPE" with values like "text/x-email".
If you want to know more, or just enjoy a really good read, have
a look at a book called "Practical File System Design" by Dominic
Giampaolo which describes BeOS and compares the inner workings
with EXT2, NTFS and several other file systems.
- Alex
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