On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 01:57:33PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

... or, alternatively, add a subfield to the first field (which would
entail escaping whatever separator we choose):

/dev/md6 /export ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/md6:/users/foo /home/foo ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/md6:/users/bar /home/bar ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0

Hell, no.  The first field is in principle impossible to parse unless
you know the fs type.

How about making a new file with sane format?  From the very
beginning.  E.g. mountpoint + ID + relative path + type + options,
where ID uniquely identifies superblock (e.g. numeric st_dev)
and backing device (if any) is sitting among the options...