path that points to location in memory?

[peteratoce]

The remarks for the System.io.Path class definition tell us that "A path does not necessarily point to a location on disk;... a path might map to a location in memory".

I find that very interesting, because it might enable me to avoid going through a temporary file on HD, when certain functions insist to be passed a file path!

Unfortunately I have no idea on how to accomplish this, and I could not find an example, in spite of extensive search through the Web. Anyone ever found more info on this?

Peter

 

[mwightman]

It could point to a RAM Disk.

 

[cjard]

It's getting more at the point that some devices dont have paths. For example, on a Java Virtual Machine running in a very simple embedded device (a washing pachine) a "path" might simply be a memory location and a number of bytes.. Some machines have no file system because all the code they ever run is stored in rom. Such a path might be "123@456" - 123 bytes at 456. Try not to think of this in a Windows-Is-The-Only-Thing-In-The-Computing-World point of view. On windows paths refer to some point in the filesystem, not some location on disk. All in all, a path is contextual to the environment in which it is found.

ps; What's the difference between memory and disk anyway? Is a disk not memory? Can memory not be a disk?

Semantics..

 

[cjard]

I find that very interesting, because it might enable me to avoid going through a temporary file on HD, when certain functions insist to be passed a file path!

No getting round that, but those functions MIGHT be overloaded to accept a stream instead of a path, in which case you can write to a memory stream, then reset it to the start, and pass it to another function for reading, thereby avoiding the temporary file