Even 16 or so years earlier in 1990, Sun played with the idea of putting a PostScript interpreter in the SunOS kernel.

Like NeWS was the Network extensible Window System, so NeFS was the Network extensible File System, or NFS 3.0.

It was actually a great idea, just a wee bit before its time, and very poorly named and positioned!

For example: If you want to make a copy of a file on the server, you can send a PostScript program that runs in the kernel and copies the file locally on the server in the kernel with ZERO context switches, instead of sending it over the net to the client, then back from the client to the server. Even if you rsh'ed the user command "cp" on the server, it would still incur context switching, but if your copy loop was running in the kernel then it didn't need to switch in and out and in and out for every block it copied.

There are more examples of why it's a great idea in the paper.

This comparison of NeWS to AJAX also applies NeFS, which is like kernel NeWS with file operations instead of a graphics library -- it also saves you lots of user/kernel context switches even if you're not doing any networking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS

>NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently:

>- used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming.

>- used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering.

>- used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation.

It didn't go over very well because the unenlightened philistines of the time couldn't get their head around an API to the file system that wasn't compatible with creat open close read write and ioctl.

http://donhopkins.com/home/nfs3_0.pdf

Network Extensible File System Protocol Specification

1.0 Introduction

The Network Extensible File System protocol (NeFS) provides transparent remote access to shared file systems over networks. The NeFS protocol is designed to be machine, operating system, network architecture, and transport protocol independent. This document is the draft specification for the protocol. It will remain in draft form during a period of public review. Italicized comments in the document are intended to present the rationale behind elements of the design and to raise questions where there are doubts. Comments and suggestions on this draft specification are most welcome.

[...]

Example: Copy a File

Make a copy of file (foo) called (bar). Both files exist in the same directory dfh. The request starts by looking up the filehandle for the file to be copied and creates a filehandle for the copy. The loop operator executes a procedure that copies the file using 1K reads and writes. It maintains a running count of the number of bytes yet to be copied.

    % Copy a file
    %
    dfh (foo) lookup /foofh exch def % get filehandle for (foo)
    dfh (bar) create /barfh exch def % create filehandle for (bar)
    /bytes foofh getattr /fsize get def % get size of (foo) so we know how much to copy
    /offset 0 def % initialize offset for (bar)
    {
        /data foofh offset 1024 read def % read up to 1K from (foo)
        barfh offset data write % write up to 1K to (bar)
        /bytes bytes 1024 sub def % decrement byte count by 1024
        bytes 0 le { exit } if % if it’s < 0 then we’re done
        /offset offset 1024 add def % increment offset by 1024
    }
    loop
    barfh getattr 1 encodereply sendreply % return the attributes of the new file to client.