News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why Files Exist. Parent comment

Re:Why Files Exist by _quora on Friday June 29, 2012 @05:14PM (#4179130)
"What exists is a way to name a non-volatile data set."

   1. What if it's "code" not "data"? I thought "data" in this case was just 1's and 0's, i.e. what the represent, e.g. electric charges on a medium? I thought that how we interpret these charges is what makes them "code" or "data".

   2. What if the "file" is stored on a "RAM disk"? Is that non-volatile? If no, then does that mean this is not, by your definition, a "file"?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Files Exist by notatoad on Friday June 29, 2012 @08:12PM (#4179865)
1. code is data. Thanks, mr Von Neumann!

2. the implementation of the storage is another level of abstraction away. the filesystem assumes the media it exists on is non-volatile, what exactly that means in implementation is irrelevant. theoretically you could call a traditional spinning disk volatile because i could hit it with a hammer and destroy it.

[ Parent | on HN ]