Christian Mayrhuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > On Saturday 27 November 2004 12:09, Peter Foldiak wrote: > > On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 21:13, Christian Mayrhuber wrote: > > > Regarding namespace unification + XPath: > > > For files: cat /etc/passwd/[. = "joe"] should work like in XPath. > > > > I don't understand this. Why would you need the "."? And why the / > > between passwd and [ ? > Yes, I was confused by /etc/passwd/[username] in an earlier email. > I think we both mean basically the same.
Now think about files with other formats, for instance the (in)famous sendmail.cf, or less structured stuff like you find in /etc/init.d/, or just Postgres databases (with fun stuff like permissions on records and fields)... or just people groping in /etc/passwd wanting to find the whole entry (not just one field), or perhaps look at the 15th character of the entry for John Doe. This way lies utter madness (what format description should be applied to what file this time around?). Plus shove all this garbage into the kernel?! -- Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513