/*
 * title "File System Views"
 * author "Dylan Lom"
 * date "2021-07-12"
 * link stylesheet "/main.css"
 */

# $(echo $title)

What if instead of `$PATH` there was a special directory on your system that
aggregated together a bunch of different binaries?

In SQL-land, to create a table-adjacent thing (our directory equivalent) that
took results from several different tables you'd create a view with a union,
ie.

```
    SELECT name, path
    FROM bin

    UNION

    SELECT name, path
    FROM sbin
    WHERE name IN ('shutdown', 'reboot')

    UNION

    SELECT name, path
    FROM usr_bin
```

In the naming of our example tables I've referenced when binaries commonly live
on a modern *nix system.

Lets say we had this view-directory located at `$HOME/.views/PATH`; and now we
can happily set `export PATH=$HOME/.views/PATH`. I think that's pretty cool,
we've added an obfuscating, unnecessary layer of abstraction to our system
(nice)!

What I like about this example if the flexibility shown in the second query --
we can dynamically filter what's in our path (you could achieve this sort of a
setup using symlinks to individual files, but you'd constantly need to add more
with new software).

Once I've thought about it some more (if I think about it some more), I might
write a follow up piece exploring what a SQL-esque file system would look like.