Why don we add resource forks/streams to Linux filesystems like NT has?
• (REG) Resource forks (aka “named streams”) are a way of storing multiple “streams” of data in a file. Each stream may be read, written and seeked in just like in files with only one stream of data. Resource forks are used to store ancillary data with files (such as which icon to display for the file when using a graphical filemanager). These extra streams of data may be manipulated by any user who has write access to the file, just as the “primary” stream can be manipulated. Unix only supports one “stream” of data per file. Adding support for multiple streams to the Linux kernel is not considered to be especially difficult. However, files with multiple data streams would break a large number of user-space programmes (which currently only manipulate the “primary” stream) and protocols (such as ftp, http, email, NFS and many more). A number of new utilities would need to be written, and a large number of shell scripts would have to be audited for correctness in a multiple-stream world.
