Re: Virtual Filesystem

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 11:53:54AM +0800, Alan Knowles wrote: > If a new driver is written for the object one, then the Horde_VFS, > could provide a wrapper to it in a similar way... I really only have one general comment on the current state of this discussion: why do we need an object-based VFS system? To flesh that out a bit more: I can see why some may prefer an object-based system over an array-based system for various reasons. In fact, it's an important decision to make when designing a _new_ interface. However, the VFS code already exists, and it happens to be array-based. So, before people on this list start re-engineering an existing code base (almost always a waste of time, in my experience, especially when the original code is in now way broken), can someone _please_ make a list of the reasons why all of this work is necessary? Is the current interface really lacking in any way that makes it unusable? Is it not possible to expand the array-based system to fill those needs? In short, please don't complicate this system simply because there is a belief that "objects would be better" without providing some real evidence. In my personal opinion, if the current VFS system works for nearly all cases, there's no reason to increase the size of the code base at the expense of conciseness and maintainability. Let's see a real needs assessment first! Or have I become too involved in my software engineering literature and dependable systems coursework? -- Jon Parise (jon@php.net) :: The PHP Project (http://www.php.net/)