29 Aug
2006
29 Aug
'06
6:24 p.m.
I don't know if anybody pointed it out already but the IBM S/38, AS/400
and derivatives have strongly typed 'objects', not files. It doesn't
matter what you name a database table, an Ethernet line description, or
a user profile - the OS knows what those things are and will not
interpret them differently if you copy or rename them.
As a concession to hierarchical filesystems like the ones used by Unix
there is a 'file system' where the OS refuses to interpret what the
files are and just considers them streams of bytes.