Methods and systems for copying and moving across virtual namespaces

Abstract

A method is described for moving a collection of resources from a source virtual namespace to a destination virtual namespace. For example, the method could copy or move the files within a URI directory “http://server/dir1/” to a new URI directory “http://server/newdir1” using a single copy or move request. In response to an appropriate request, the computer system the computer system performs the following acts for the parent directory and then for those subdirectories at any level underneath the parent directory. For each directory, the computer system determines the physical namespace (e.g., file system path) that corresponds to the virtual namespace of that directory. This is performed for both the directory in the source virtual namespace and the corresponding directory in the destination virtual namespace. Next, the files are copied from the directory of the source physical namespace to the directory of the destination physical directory. In a move operation, the files within that source directory are deleted at some point after being copied. The method allows a user to treat the Internet as a readable and writable medium organized in a tree-like directory structure and allows copying or moving in a single request across the directory structure.