Veritas File System 4.1 Administrator's Guide (HP-UX 11i v3, February 2007)

Application Interface
Named Data Streams
Chapter 4 69
Named Data Streams
Named data streams associate multiple data streams with a file. Access to the named data stream can be
done through a file descriptor using the named data stream library functions. Applications can open the
named data stream to obtain a file descriptor and perform read(), write(), and mmap() operations using
the file descriptor. These system calls would work as though they are operating on a regular file. The named
data streams of a file are stored in a hidden named data stream directory inode associated with the file. The
hidden directory inode for the file can be accessed only through the named data stream application
programming interface.
NOTE Named data streams are also known as named attributes.