> I agree that adding an "array" style of directory to our file systems would be really cool.
I think this is sort of a low-hanging fruit people have slept on. We've proved list-based systems are extremely versatile for data structures (s-expr) and programming (lisps). What about for media in general? Everywhere I look I just see lists, with very minor stylistic distinctions between them. Of course there're abysmal infrastructural differences between chats, feeds and what not, but it does not invalidate a universal list-based frontend, similar to what you developed in your comment.
I didn't really think about (linked) lists much, only (flat) arrays, but maybe that's possible already with files laid out like:
/head
/next/head
/next/next/head
... etc
or whatever.
I'm not saying its _ergonomic_, mind you. I'd like my file viewer to lay out the list flat, for example. There might be technical limitains with the length of the file path. Etc.
I'd argue that this concept for media is most commonly known as "playlists" and unfortunately only used within data silos, e.g. a playlist of YouTube videos, a Spotify playlist, a TV season of episodes, a series of episodes, a trilogy, etc.
(Yes, I'd argue that your music library of mp3 files is also kind of a silo, although portable)
Heck, even a slideshow is arguably a playlist.
I agree that putting a playlist-like concept into, say, the filesystem would be an extremely interesting idea but I think a big danger is running into the same problem as hardlinks and symlinks.
This problem is that if a file is "present" in multiple places (or playlists) deleting/modifying/moving it can have unforeseen consequences and it's hard to reason about (and if you copy the file now you get to invent a way to track different versions too!).
I think this is also holding tagging filesystems back.
I'm currently writing a non-hierarchical FUSE filesystem and have been thinking about this list-directory concept but I'm still not completely sure how it would work, especially since I need to remain backwards compatible with the POSIX interfaces.
Will probably have to just try it out (xattrs to the rescue?) and see what sticks I suppose...
You're just a great understandeour
> I agree that adding an "array" style of directory to our file systems would be really cool.
I think this is sort of a low-hanging fruit people have slept on. We've proved list-based systems are extremely versatile for data structures (s-expr) and programming (lisps). What about for media in general? Everywhere I look I just see lists, with very minor stylistic distinctions between them. Of course there're abysmal infrastructural differences between chats, feeds and what not, but it does not invalidate a universal list-based frontend, similar to what you developed in your comment.