[Info-vax] OT: Rob Short: Operating System Evolution

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Paul Sture <paul.nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
(snip)
 
> One problem I find with OS X (and I assume other *nix variants) is 
> determining which files are executables or scripts. The .EXE and .COM 
> convention used by VMS does makes that easy to see at a glance.
 
> OTOH, the GUI for OS X does look inside the file to see what it is, and 
> Samba does too, which is what cripples Samba performance on VMS when 
> browsing large directories.

Unix, and I presume OS X, has the executable bit to tell programs
(such as the shell) which files to consider as executable.  There is
no need to look inside files with the bit not set.

C shell, at least, has a hash system to keep track of executable
files to speed up the search.

-- glen