Querying the Linking File System

The Linking File System (LiFS) is an experimental file system being developed by UC Santa Cruz. It allows users to define relational links between files with a semantic meaning. This paper explores the possibilities of a query language to find information in LiFS, while taking advantage of links. The results show that a very powerful language can be defined and implemented. The implementation uses rules to “walk” the directory structure to search for files. This style of searching is very inefficient in larger file systems, even when the search is restricted to a small subdirectory. A new searching idea will be needed to implement this query language efficiently.