RFC 180 (rfc180) - Page 1 of 4

File system questionnaire

Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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Network Working Group                                     Alex McKenzie
Request for Comments #180                                 BBN
NIC #7123                                                 25 June 1971
Categories: D.7, G.3
Updates: none
Obsoletes: none

                       File System Questionnaire

As noted in RFC #164 (page 35), a subcommittee of the NWG, under the
chairmanship of Abhay Bhushan, is currently generating proposals for a
"data transfer protocol" and a "file transfer protocol".

The subcommittee has decided that the file transfer protocol should
provide standard methods for requesting the transfer of a file but
should not, at this time, attempt to standardize file naming
conventions, access control conventions, and the like.  Thus a user
who is, for example, trying to store a file on a remote Host will be
required to use the file naming conventions appropriate to the remote
Host.

Given the above point of view, it becomes imperative for users to have
some source of information about Host file conventions.  Such
information, once compiled, will also serve as input to possible
standardization efforts of the file transfer subcommittee.  For this
reason Abhay has asked me to solicit information on file conventions
from the Host organizations.  What follows is a description of the
kinds of information of interest.  I am well aware of the fact that
many of you are tired of writing system descriptions; Xerox copies of
short sections of your local documentation are fine if the result is
complete and comprehensible.  (In the case that your Host will never
permit network use of your file system, a note to that effect would be
sufficient.)

                         Information Requested

1.  File naming conventions - We (loosely) define a pathname to be
    the data string which must be input to the file system by a user
    (a network user if your system makes a distinction between local
    and network users) in order to identify a file.  We are interested
    in syntax, semantics, and defaults.  Typical components of pathnames
    are:

         - "device" fields
         - user names
         - version numbers
         - index names
         - punctuation marks
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