Subject: [netatalk-admins] Alias handling

From: Red Hat Linux User <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 20:37:27 +0200 (MET DST)

I am not familiar inner things of MacOS, but followed the discussion
on the aliases and their properties. I have an idea, that can solve
many problems fairly easily.

Let's suppose, we have a directory at the root of the AFP
volume, say ".AppleAliases". We use the clock (current time) as
an ID factory, thus the ID will be unique. When an alias is set up,
we (in the base case):

1) get the ID of the file named <NAME>
2) mv <NAME> <AFPVOLUME>/.AppleAliases/<ID>
3) ln -s <AFPVOLUME>/.AppleAliases/<ID> <NAME>

At the first step we should check whether the file had an ID
or not. If it had, we should not fabricate a new ID but give back
the original one.

With this solution the ID generation is simple, the file I/O by
ID is fast, recovering the "original file" from the ID is not too slow
(i.e. getting the symlink that replaced the original file),
and the all thing is invariant against moving the symlink file
around the volume.

OK. There can be many details I have not even heard about.
Sorry, if this was discussed before.			Incze