YAMAMOTO Takashi wrote:
>>Implement expansion of special "magic" strings in symlinks into
>>system-specific values.  Submitted by Chris Demetriou in Nov 1995 (!)
>>in PR kern/1781, modified only slighly by me.
>>
>>This is enabled on a per-mount basis with the MNT_MAGICLINKS mount
>>flag.  It can be enabled at mountroot() time by building the kernel
>>with the ROOTFS_MAGICLINKS option.
>>
>>The following magic strings are supported by the implementation:
>>
>>	@machine	value of MACHINE for the system
>>	@machine_arch	value of MACHINE_ARCH for the system
>>	@hostname	the system host name, as set with sethostname()
>>	@domainname	the system domain name, as set with setdomainname()
>>	@kernel_ident	the kernel config file name
>>	@osrelease	the releaes number of the OS
>>	@ostype		the name of the OS (always "NetBSD" for NetBSD)
> 
> 
> is there any os which uses the compatible semantics with this?
> why don't you follow the existing conventions like tru64 cdsl or
> dragonfly varsym?

AIUI, IRIX has this feature as well, ISTR it uses % and : somehow to 
signify variable expansion. I'd need to dig up some docs on it to find 
out more. Stay tuned... that is unless I completely forget about it.

-- 
Staffan