Re: representing file pathnames

On Aug 9, 2012, at 2:46 PM, Howard Chu wrote: > Michael Ströder wrote: >> Chuck Lever wrote: >>> We could also use an NFS URL, which would allow us to express the server >>> hostname, a port number, and the pathname in a single string. But both the >>> hostname and pathname are enocded in US-ASCII, not UTF-8, and the NFS URL >>> format employs a fixed pathname separator character. >> >> That's what I would prefer. Think of file browsers which can open the NFS >> mount point just by clicking on it. Same encoding steps as with file URLs. > > This seems the most obvious and natural solution (NFS URL). After all, you are > specifying an NFS resource... I've looked more closely at this idea. While it's got some surface appeal, NFS URLs (RFC 2224) don't specify a generic NFS resource. They specify a webDAV like resource that can be accessed with NFS, called WebNFS (RFC 2054, RFC 20550), which gives clients access via a so-called "public file handle," which is a degenerate NFS FH. WebNFS is defined only for legacy versions of NFS, not for NFSv4. Referrals are supported only in NFSv4. In fact, section 4 of RFC 2224 specifies that clients try version 3 then version 2. NFS version 4 is not discussed. Thus, the form of an NFS URL might be rich enough, but the existing semantics are not equivalent.