file data forks

Jan Bottorff janb at pmatrix.com
Tue Mar 13 23:17:09 UTC 2001


>There's actually a lot of interesting stuff in the file system we were
>defining.  Basically, we extended Apple's dual-fork files with n-fork files,
>indexed with four-character codes (Apple's OSType).  The conventional file
>is the 'data' fork, which is what you get if you simply open the file.  The
>libraries could be files with a 'libs' fork, with extended  ELF segments (in
>order to include fetch information) indexed by MD5.

Note that Windows NTFS volumes have always had n-fork files. Fork names can 
be arbitrary length strings. The accessing syntax is "filename:streamName".

I see the Squeak DosFileDirectory class incorrectly prevents ":" in file 
filenames. I believe it's method "checkName:fixErrors:". This can prevent 
Squeak from accessing any of the alternative file streams.

- Jan






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