space listing

I remember being disappointed when I learned that an asteroid belt is nothing like what I knew from videogames (also an excellent song by Lana Del Rey), where you have to maneuver your ship between rocks with hardly any space between them. The truth is that you can pass through an asteroid belt without even seeing or coming close to any asteroid at all!

Space is like that. Contains a near infinite number of things but if you don't know where to look it might as well be empty.

Spaces in ROC (because of the way I set up your mind you might read that as "rocks in space") can also be like that. Sometimes you just want to know what is there before you go in and request it.

Note that this is not a logical train of thought. Because - and I quote Peter Rodgers - how do you enumerate a potentially infinite set?

It is however a practical train of thought, one that can only be followed through for spaces that are enumerable (whatever that means for the given space type). Such as a fileset. And of course, there's a tool in NetKernel that allows you to do that. Try the following in the Scripting Playpen :

<sequence>

  <request assignment="response">

    <identifier>active:sls</identifier>

    <argument name="space">urn:org:netkernel:ext:system</argument>

  </request>

</sequence>


Here's a snippet of the result :

<dir id="res:/etc/" name="etc">

  <res id="res:/etc/messages.properties" name="messages.properties"/>

  <dir id="res:/etc/system/" name="system">

    <res id="res:/etc/system/Books.xml" name="Books.xml"/>

    <res id="res:/etc/system/Docs.xml" name="Docs.xml"/>

  </dir>

</dir>


Now we are getting somewhere! This opens up possibilities for a resource oriented ftp server or a resource oriented content management system or a <your idea here>.

When you read the documentation for sls you'll notice that there are plans for some future enhancements. Come and see the future in next week's entry!