Re: es decompression hack

[arnold@cc.gatech.edu (Arnold Robbins)]

Sorry for the long delay on this. Been away from email for a bit.

> as to the specifics of John's suggestions, i agree that the < hack
> is inadequate, because you really want to be able to have any file
> automatically do the decompression, but you certainly don't want to
> make the kernel know rules like
> 	$file : $file.Z := zcat $file.Z
> (adjust notation to taste, of course)  what we really need, of course,
> is kernel hooks, similar to the hooks in es, so you can catch calls
> to open() rather than just the calls to open in the shell.

If I understand correctly, the GNU os, being built on top of Mach 3.0,
will allow exactly this sort of thing, cleanly and securely.

Alas, as with much of the GNU s/w, there is no ETA, but there is work
definitely being done on it, and they welcome capable help.
--
Arnold Robbins --- College of Computing
Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0280	Phone: +1 404 894 9214
E-mail: arnold.robbins@cc.gatech.edu	FAX:   +1 404 853 9378
"He's not dead, he's metaphysically challenged." - Mystery Science Theatre 3000