- From: <ccjason@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:17:31 -0500
- To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> I promised Adv. Coll. design team I'd start a thread on this topic, Thank you Geoff. I'm in the middle of a similar note but keep on getting distracted by work. :-) > The expected semantics of MOVE is that I end up with the same stuff > at some new location, and even a hope that appropriate references to > the old stuff ends up pointing at the new stuff (i.e. that business > about updating things between the COPY and the DELETE). I agree. > The expected semantics of COPY is that I end up with a different > object, so that I can modify one copy and have it not affect the other. Yup. I agree. > Now let's look at what a MOVE on a reference should be. It's pretty > clear that you just want to have a copy of the source reference created > at the destination. If you look at how both hard-links and sym-links > are implemented in file systems, this is exactly what happens. I tend to agree. > But now let's look at what a COPY on a reference should be. > If you just make a copy of the reference, then any PUT to tthe > source object will cause a modification visible in a GET to the > destination object, and vica versa. This is the opposite behavior > from what one would expect from a "copy", and seems to violate > the whole point of differentiating a "MOVE" from a "COPY". I don't necessarily agree here. What I expect (or at least want) depends on what I'm doing at the time. I think I'd tend to expect the reference to be copied. I don't think my disagreement here really detracts from what you're saying though. > One alternative is to revisit the definition of MOVE as a kind > of COPY. Part of me says that is the right choice, since many > (or even most) systems treat MOVE as a "rename", not as a copy. > ... > "mv" to be a "tar" followed by an "rm -r". I agree. We should look through the old discussions to see what reasons they had for this. (I started this in my unfinished note.) I recall one was MOVE between servers. That's not really a compelling argument for me and I believe that it was suggested at one point that if the move is between servers, then a COPY/DELETE would get done... otherwise, what you suggest. Anyway, I'm suggesting going through those discussions again to see what we can learn. > Either alternative is fine with me. I prefer the right solution over the expedient. We should not be encouraging the view that MOVE is a COPY/DELETE... except where necessary. Let's review old postings to see what situations we need to cover. Thanks again for bringing this up. J.
Received on Tuesday, 2 February 1999 09:14:48 UTC