[ExI] Paper and patent citations

[David Lubkin]

In thinking, ruefully, about the inconsequence of one of my best 
inventions, it just dawned on me that it may have been much more 
significant than I'd realized.

One of the central concepts in the patent was that when trying to 
communicate information in a pathname across different programs, 
operating systems, and/or protocols, the only safe place to embed 
information is in an interior directory name. When that magic point 
is reached, its value is used as a database key, and alters the 
interpretation of the rest of the path, if any.

That is, /usr/home/lubkin/projects/editor/v12345/parse.cc

This is identical to the design used, for much the same reasons, 
throughout the web, to make a database lookup look like an ordinary 
path and filename, viz.,

http://www.amazon.com/dp/123456789/ref=fdglkjsdfg/foo=sdfgdf

or

http://myblog.blogboy.xyz/blog/2007/11/2345.html

It's hard to believe that this was original to me, but equally hard 
to believe that none of the technical reviewers -- including the very 
smartest people at Apollo Computer -- gave any hint that it wasn't original.

Do you know of any prior art? My invention was 1988.


-- David.