Re: [tlug] Permissions are like Rubik's cubes [SOLVED]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > But that "collection of facts" itself is pretty unstructured.

Well, no.  It's a graph connecting each file to its metadata.  In the
directory view, it's a map.  From the file side, not quite, but there
is a necessary structure there.  That's why I referred to it as a
"directory".

 > there may be a dozen of them); in DOS, every existing file has exactly
 > one directory entry, and doesn't have permissions information.

Of course it does, at a minimum there's a readonly attribute, and you
could argue that the extension determines executability.  What it
doesn't have at all is ownership information.

 > Perhaps, "contents" and "non-content information"? "Metadata" seems
 > easier.

Well, for my purpose I want this stuff structured on a per-file basis,
whether the data is kept in a glob (the directory itself), in the file
itself (conceptually, the Macintosh resource fork), or in a separate
object (inode).  Again, contents and non-content information could
easily be taken as unstructured in that way.

There may be no good way to provide those connotations, but that's
what I'm after.