[Info-vax] Porting logical name applications to Unix

[Bob Harris]

In article <hbh1gp$on5$2 at online.de>,
 helbig at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES 
 to reply) wrote:

> In article <00767ed3$0$5067$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
> <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes: 
> 
> > Ok, this is a generic question.
> > 
> > Say I have a VMS application that uses logical names to point to files,
> > devices etc.
> > 
> > When porting to a Unix system, 
> 
> What about different modes, search lists etc?

No modes, no search lists per say.  PATH, MANPATH, CDPATH as used 
by various utilities provide a search list capability, but it is 
the specific utilities that use them which implements the search.

Besides, that an environment variable and symlink holds a value.  
The symlink's value has a special meaning to the kernel namei() 
VFS layer path name navigation code, but if someone wanted to just 
store something else in the symlink, that could be done as well 
(not unlike using logical names to hold non-disk/directory/file 
info).

The closest thing to modes might be that a symlink can be placed 
in a directory that a set of users do not have access to, but 
besides that, there are no modes.

And of course config files are just files with basically the same 
behavior as an OpenVMS LF file.

                                        Bob Harris