From: Pat Eyler <pate@...>
Date: 2002-03-21T00:24:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Archives

On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:

> Those interested in archive-like containers like Tar and Zip but also
> mailboxes, flat file databases, and even file system directories,
> please have a look at http://www.allruby.com/rpkg/ar.rb.  Thomas Hurst
> and I worked on the prototype of an interface that in the end could
> let you access all these containers uniformly.  I'd be grateful for
> any comments.

I like the concept of having a single interface to a variety of
information sources.  Picking a good name[1] may prove to be difficult
though.  ar is already in use as the name of the static library tools on
unix/linux.  gear (Get Every ARchive), par (Pan ARchive), roar [Ruby Opens
ARchives], Zanzibar (it just sounds cool, while including the 'ar'
phoneme) are not (I don't think) in use, though some of them are pretty
lame.

-pate

>
> Massimiliano
>


[1] I recognize that naming is not nearly as important as design or
working code, but I thought I'd toss this out anyway.  I also realize that
good naming is in the ear of the beholder