[ILUG] Extended Symlinks

[David Golden]

On Wednesday 19 December 2001 13:13, Padraig Brady wrote:

> No you can't do this (pass parameters using symbolic links). 

although that does raise an interesting idea, that I know I've harped on 
about before -  how about exending symlinks/the filesystem a bit -
symlinks could fairly easily be adapted into a hurd settrans-like abstraction,
among other things - imagine, rather than having /etc/fstab, 
ln -s  "!demand-mount /dev/hdb $here" /usr/local/ 

Of course, security permissioning on such things could be... interesting,
but if the "x" permission on symlinks themselves controlled following 
themselves, rather than the current system of all chmod operations being 
transferred to the taarget of the symlink, then it could be workable, indeed, 
simpler method of managing "mounting"
 
I think windows 2000 "reparse points" can do this sort of thing, in a 
slightly messy, difficult/impossible-to-control-from-the-command-line way,
and they're applicable to any program using the filesystem on it, not just 
explorer.