[gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Alan E. Davis]

I remember a little MSDOG shell utility called 4dos.  It alllowed me
to store comments that would appear alongside the filename.  Can
anyone point to a way to do this transparently and easily with bash? 
I don't want to run any extra programs if I can avoid it.  I do like
dired for emacs, though.

Thanks for any ideas.  I refer to this list because I can't think
where else to look.

Alan Davis

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Franta]

On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 08:03 +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> I remember a little MSDOG shell utility called 4dos.  It alllowed me
> to store comments that would appear alongside the filename.  Can
> anyone point to a way to do this transparently and easily with bash? 
> I don't want to run any extra programs if I can avoid it.  I do like
> dired for emacs, though.
> 
> Thanks for any ideas.  I refer to this list because I can't think
> where else to look.
> 
> Alan Davis

Hi,

the idea is fine. How did DOS show the comments? ``dir /c'' ???
How would you like to see then with bash ``ls --comment'' ???

Hmmm.


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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Gerhard Hoogterp]

On Sunday 12 February 2006 23:03, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> I remember a little MSDOG shell utility called 4dos.  It alllowed me
> to store comments that would appear alongside the filename.  Can
> anyone point to a way to do this transparently and easily with bash?
> I don't want to run any extra programs if I can avoid it.  I do like
> dired for emacs, though.

4dos (and 4NT, still use it daily on win2000) had to deal with 8.3 filenames.. 
So it used an index file named descript.ion. Under linux that's not nessecary 
as you can just use long filenames including spaces.. 

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Alexander Skwar]

Gerhard Hoogterp wrote:

> 4dos (and 4NT, still use it daily on win2000) had to deal with 8.3 filenames.. 
> So it used an index file named descript.ion. Under linux that's not nessecary 
> as you can just use long filenames including spaces.. 

While all of that is certainly true, it doesn't help you at all,
if you wish to put a descriptive comment on a file. For example,
it's a rather bad idea to rename /etc/passwd just to have a
comment in the filename :)

Yes, symlinks exist, but that's still not the same.

No, I don't have an idea. Anything I can think of would require
patching "ls". And I don't think that this would be a clever
idea...

Alexander Skwar
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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Alan E. Davis]

On 2/13/06, Gerhard Hoogterp <gerhard@frappe.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Under linux that's not nessecary
> as you can just use long filenames including spaces..
>

I do that, of course.   It solves 95% of my issues.  Somehow, I still
miss that feature.  Additional comments would help me, for example,
when I have a series of source code files with similar file names, and
need to make comments to distinguish them.  Especially when other
programs are looking for the file names in a series.

Alan

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Iain Buchanan]

On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 09:47 +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> On 2/13/06, Gerhard Hoogterp <gerhard@frappe.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> > Under linux that's not nessecary
> > as you can just use long filenames including spaces..
> >
> 
> I do that, of course.   It solves 95% of my issues.  Somehow, I still
> miss that feature.  Additional comments would help me, for example,
> when I have a series of source code files with similar file names, and
> need to make comments to distinguish them.  Especially when other
> programs are looking for the file names in a series.

The simplest way I can see to do it, would be to:
- make a bash script called "ls"
- put it in your ~/bin directory (not in /bin)
- make an alias to _your_ ls, which first checks for a descript.ion file
or maybe even .comments file in the current directory, and then passes
the rest to ls.

A bit of fiddling, but that's what linux is about - if it doesn't work
the way you want it: make it work the way you want it!!

Let me know if you want to know more about this method.

-- 
Iain Buchanan <iain at netspace dot net dot au>

Obviously your filters are throwing away mail from Randal.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199710221937.MAA25131@wall.org>

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[John Jolet]

On 2/12/06 6:10 PM, "Iain Buchanan" <iaindb@netspace.net.au> wrote:

> On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 09:47 +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote:
>> On 2/13/06, Gerhard Hoogterp <gerhard@frappe.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>> Under linux that's not nessecary
>>> as you can just use long filenames including spaces..
>>> 
>> 
>> I do that, of course.   It solves 95% of my issues.  Somehow, I still
>> miss that feature.  Additional comments would help me, for example,
>> when I have a series of source code files with similar file names, and
>> need to make comments to distinguish them.  Especially when other
>> programs are looking for the file names in a series.
> 
> The simplest way I can see to do it, would be to:
> - make a bash script called "ls"
> - put it in your ~/bin directory (not in /bin)
> - make an alias to _your_ ls, which first checks for a descript.ion file
> or maybe even .comments file in the current directory, and then passes
> the rest to ls.
You know...now that you put it that way, I seem to recall seeing a project
in freshmeat that did something like that....
> 
> A bit of fiddling, but that's what linux is about - if it doesn't work
> the way you want it: make it work the way you want it!!
> 
> Let me know if you want to know more about this method.


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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Iain Buchanan]

On Sun, 2006-02-12 at 18:21 -0600, John Jolet wrote:
> On 2/12/06 6:10 PM, "Iain Buchanan" <iaindb@netspace.net.au> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 09:47 +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> >> On 2/13/06, Gerhard Hoogterp <gerhard@frappe.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >>> Under linux that's not nessecary
> >>> as you can just use long filenames including spaces..
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> I do that, of course.   It solves 95% of my issues.  Somehow, I still
> >> miss that feature.
> > 
> > The simplest way I can see to do it, would be to:
> > - make a bash script called "ls"
> > - put it in your ~/bin directory (not in /bin)
> > - make an alias to _your_ ls, which first checks for a descript.ion file
> > or maybe even .comments file in the current directory, and then passes
> > the rest to ls.
> 
> You know...now that you put it that way, I seem to recall seeing a project
> in freshmeat that did something like that....

just for fun, I wrote this leedle script with my trusty glass hammer,
left handed screw driver, and can of 3mm holes.  Call it "ls" and put it
in ~/.bin or something similar.  It's not ideal but its a nice start if
you want to go further...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my %files;

for my $i (0 .. $#ARGV) {
    # print "$ARGV[$i] ";
    if ($ARGV[$i] !~ /^-/) {
	$files{$ARGV[$i]} = '';
    }
}

# for my $i (sort keys %files) {
#     print "'$i': '" . $files{$i} . "'\n";
# }

for my $i (sort keys %files) {
    $files{$i} = [ `dirname $i`, `basename $i`];
    chomp $files{$i}->[0];
    chomp $files{$i}->[1];
    # print 'file is ' . $files{$i}->[0] . ' ' . $files{$i}->[1] . "\n";

    my $command = 'cat ' . $files{$i}->[0] . '/.comment 2>/dev/null | egrep "^' . $files{$i}->[1] . ' "';
    # print "$command\n";
    print `$command`;
}

print `/usr/bin/ls @ARGV\n`;

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Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more
deadly in the long run.
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[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Moshe Kaminsky]

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* Alan E. Davis <lngndvs@gmail.com> [13/02/06 02:08]:
> 
> On 2/13/06, Gerhard Hoogterp <gerhard@frappe.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> > Under linux that's not nessecary
> > as you can just use long filenames including spaces..
> >
> 
> I do that, of course.   It solves 95% of my issues.  Somehow, I still
> miss that feature.  Additional comments would help me, for example,
> when I have a series of source code files with similar file names, and
> need to make comments to distinguish them.  Especially when other
> programs are looking for the file names in a series.

You can use extended attributes for this. See getfattr(1) and attr(5) 
from sys-apps/attr. I think you need to enable this for the file system 
you are using when compiling the kernel (and maybe also pass the 
"use_xattr" option when mounting)

HTH,
Moshe
> 
> Alan
> 
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> 

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    Moshe Kaminsky <kaminsky@math.huji.ac.il>
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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Iain Buchanan]

On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 14:02 +0930, Iain Buchanan wrote:
> just for fun, I wrote this leedle script

I should have explained it a bit more - the script looks for a .comment
file, and matches the first word in that file.  Anything after this word
is a "comment" for the file.

so if you said ~/.bin/ls -al foobar

and the file .comment existed, containing:
foobar this is a comment

the output would be:
foobar this is a comment
-rw------- 1 iain users 4668 2006-01-03 17:32 foobar

You could then alias it, so instead of type ~/.bin/ls you could just
type ls.
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Mrugesh Karnik]

On Monday 13 February 2006 11:04, Moshe Kaminsky wrote:

> You can use extended attributes for this. See getfattr(1) and attr(5)
> from sys-apps/attr.

Quoting the man page for attr:

Extended attributes implement the ability for a user to attach name:value 
pairs to objects within the _XFS_ filesystem.

Does it work for other file systems?

Mrugesh
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[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Can bash do comments on files?

[Moshe Kaminsky]

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* Mrugesh Karnik <mrugeshkarnik@gmail.com> [13/02/06 14:15]:
> 
> On Monday 13 February 2006 11:04, Moshe Kaminsky wrote:
> 
> > You can use extended attributes for this. See getfattr(1) and attr(5)
> > from sys-apps/attr.
> 
> Quoting the man page for attr:
> 
> Extended attributes implement the ability for a user to attach name:value 
> pairs to objects within the _XFS_ filesystem.

I believe you are looking at the man page for the attr command (attr(1)) 
rather than attr(5), which states that attributes are implemented for 
ext2, ext3 and xfs. I believe they are also implemented for reiserfs 
since the option exist in the kernel configuration, but I'm not sure.

Moshe

> 
> Does it work for other file systems?
> 
> Mrugesh
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> 

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