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by zamadatix 1790 days ago
It probably seems similar because file systems are typically classified as a type of hierarchical db themselves. That being said "I can represent it with a file in a filesystem" is different from "it is a filesystem" in posix (nearly) everything is accessible through the filesystem, even network sockets, it doesn't mean everything's canonical representation is a filesystem it just means it's mappable.

Regardless the point wasn't "a filesystem couldn't represent a rewritten registry" it was that the registry is actually a database today (whether viewed as a file-system like db by the reader or hierarchical db it is listed as) and the rest of the technical problems have to do with it being 30 years old and not rewritten not that it wasn't written with a file system representation as primary view in the first place.
1 comments
jaclaz 1790 days ago
From the "rant" rwmj just posted a link to:

https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/why-the-windows-regist...

>This misses the point: the Registry is a filesystem. Sure it’s stored in a file, but so is ext3 if you choose to store it in a loopback mount. The Registry binary format has all the aspects of a filesystem: things corresponding to directories, inodes, extended attributes etc.

> The major difference is that this Registry filesystem format is half-arsed. The format is badly constructed, fragile, endian-specific, underspecified and slow.

Anyway, file systems and databases are essentially similar, the point revolves more around the poor implementation of the Registry (whatever it is).

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zamadatix 1790 days ago
I think everyone is in agreement it's bad, as I said:

> Most of the actual technical issues you list have more to do with it being extended for the last 30 years in a backwards compatible way than anything to do with it being a hierarchical db instead of a filesystem.

My first line about it being a database was about point 7 in the same link:

> Back to point 1, the Registry is a half-assed, poor quality implementation of a filesystem. Importantly, it’s not a database. It should be a database!

With "not a database" in bold.

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