> This is what I dislike about magic symlinks - they *look* like a normal
> link, but aren't.  Code that, for any reason, tries to follow symlinks
> will fail miserably for no good reason.

they only aren't if the file system is told that they shouldn't be.

by "follow symlinks" do you mean "take them apart, parse them, and use
the components"?  it's not clear to me that portable code can safely
do that, anyway...


> >So you're arguing for something *more* like CDF's???
> 
> No; I'm arguing for something that will *not* show up as an existing
> file type, so programs will be less likely to think they know what's
> happening.

OK, so how do you put one of those 'new things' on, say, an iso-9660
CD-ROM?  the point is, if you're going to argue for a different
solution -- and i'm pretty sure that there is a problem that at least
some people would like to see solved -- at least have it solve the
problem...  8-)


cgd