DIR(3): directory entries
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DESCRIPTION
Files are described by directory entries. Each directory entry is
a self-describing entity made of attribute/value pairs. Most
tools in the system operate by first finding a stream of
directory entries provided a set of names as described in
names(3) and then performing some operation(s) on them.
By convention, there are a few attributes that can be expected to
exist. All their values are strings. Those that imply a numeric
value keep the value represented as a string. Those that imply a
time value correspond to the UNIX nanosecond time.
Attributes name, type, mode, size, and mtime and those starting
with an lowercase rune are expected to persist. All other
attributes starting with uppercase are not expected to persist in
the file system and are considered as temporary. The tools in the
clive/cmd package decorate directory entries with Upath and
Rpath, for example, to represent the path as given by the user
and as relative from the path as given by the user.
Attributes path, addr, type, and name will not be changed by
requests that update attributes. The size attribute for
directories is also ignored during updates. Depening on
permissions, mode, size, uid, gid and mtime can be changed; the
same goes for other attributes added by the user.
Empty attribute names can be used to remove a existing attribute,
but it is an error to try to remove attributes that cannot be
changed by the user. Although mode, mtime, size, Uid, and Gid
can be changed by the user, they cannot be removed.
This is a list of some conventional attributes:
name holds the (base) name of the file path holds the absolute
path of the file as seen by the user in the name-space addr holds
the address where to reach the resource. mtime holds the last
modification time for the file type holds a d for directories, a
- for files, and other values for other file types. mode holds
0777 or any other number represented in octal for the file
permissions. err is present only in entries used to report errors
on a file during a find request. Entries with this attribute
should be considered as errors, not as actual entries. uid holds
the user id (a string) gid holds the group id wuid holds the id
of the user who last changed the file
SEE ALSO
+o names(3)
+o zx(2)
BUG
+o The err attribute should be Err.
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User's manual. Section 3. Copyright © LSUB 2014-2016