Re: file as a directory

[Christian Mayrhuber <christian.mayrhuber@gmx.net>]

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.

> /etc/passwd/joe/shell
> 
> whould be the shell joe uses.
Yes.

> So by default, /etc/passwd/joe should be equivalent to /etc/passwd[user
> = "joe"]
Yes.
/etc/passwd/joe/shell would be equivalent to
/etc/passwd[shell = "/bin/bash"]/joe/shell if joe has bash as shell, right?

> 
> But you should be able to select based on fullname too:
> 
> /etc/passwd[fullname = "Joe Smith"]
Ok.
This means that any XPath like expression will need to return a directory 
entry representing a restricted view on the /etc/passwd contents.
The result of 'ls /etc/passwd[fullname = "Joe Smith"]' would be alike
'drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 48 2004-11-27 13:48 joe', right?

> 
> and
> 
> /etc/passwd[shell = "/bin/bash"]/user
> 
> should give you the user names of all users whose shell is /bin/bash,
> right?
I'm confused again.
I expected 'ls /etc/passwd[shell = "/bin/bash"]/user' to give you the
passwd entries of "user" and 'ls /etc/passwd[shell = "/bin/bash"]/' to
give the users that have a bash shell.


> > # cd /etc/passwd/
> > # ls -a *
> > . .. .... joe root
> > # cd joe
> > # ls
> > gid home passwd shell uid
> 
> yes, but where is the username? that would be the first one listed here,
> right?
joe is the username and a directory. There is no username entry in the
joe directory, because the username is already in the directory.
You can rename a user by renaming joe. 'mv joe newname'.

-- 
lg, Chris