From: Jeremy Bopp <jeremy@...>
Date: 2010-10-13T00:05:12+09:00
Subject: Re: OT: file attribute serialization in Windows

On 10/12/2010 9:44 AM, Daniel Berger wrote:
> 
> 
> On Oct 12, 6:27 am, Ralph Shnelvar <ral...@dos32.com> wrote:
>> I am writing a backup program (not necessarily in Ruby) and I need to back up ALL of a file's attributes.
>>
>> For Windows:
>>
>> R Read-only files
>> H Hidden files
>> A Files ready for archiving
>> S System files
>>
>> I Not content indexed files
>> L Reparse Points
>>
>> 1. Long and short names
>> 2. Owners
>> 3. Alternate data streams (ugh)
>>
>> Does anyone Out There know of code that will pick up all (did I miss any?) of these attributes?
>>
>> Is there Ruby code that serialize and deserialize all of the attributes?
> 
> Take a look at win32-file and win32-file-stat. I'm not sure what an
> "alternate data stream" is, though.

The "alternate data streams" are basically filesystem "forks":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_%28filesystem%29
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364404%28VS.85%29.aspx

-Jeremy