Ken Irving - 2007-06-01

This is preliminary, but I've recently become aware of extended attributes on Linux (and other) filesystems.  According to a Linux.com article on the subject:

    Extended attributes are ... name/value pairs that can be assigned to any file or directory

and:
    ... the coolest file system feature to be implemented since the symbolic link.

I've yet to dig into this subject further, but it seems that this would be very useful for holding" the class links and maybe other attributes of objects.  Thinobjects would be even thinner w/o the need for a "hidden" directory hack.

Using extended attributes, single files could reasonably be fully functional objects, and not just directories.  As I've pondered in other threads on this solo forum, the essence of the thinobject scheme is the ability to associate a PATH with a file or directory.  This "EA" thing might be used to store this PATH or CLASS information.