On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 05:50:56PM +0000, David Laight wrote: > > > I was recently talking to some people who'd been working with some > > > (physicists, I think) doing data-intensive simulation of some kind, > > > and that reminded me: for various reasons, many people who are doing > > > serious data collection or simulation tend to encode vast amounts of > > > metadata in the names of their data files. Arguably this is a bad way > > > of doing things, but there are reasons for it and not so many clear > > > alternatives... anyway, 256 character filenames often aren't enough in > > > that context. > > > > It's only my opinion, but they really should be using multiple files or > > a database for the metadata with as necessary a "link" to an actual > > file for data. > > Or use '/' to separate the fields in their long filename :-) > (But then they'll hit the 32k/64k limit on subdirectories ...)
This actually doesn't work that well if you ever use mv or cp on some or all of the data files. > Thinks... MD5 hash the user-specified filename and use that for > the 'real' name. Add some special fudgery so that readdir() works. > Then use some kind of overlay mount. Sounds like Windows long filenames... -- David A. Holland dholl...@netbsd.org