At 10:40 AM -0800 11/18/99, John Polstra wrote:
>I don't dispute that point, but it is worth mentioning that POSIX
>specifically guarantees that st_dev and st_ino "taken together
>uniquely identify the file within the system." So it is OK for
>applications to rely on that.
Given how many people have files mounted from foreign file systems,
I would think that applications should not rely on that. Sure, it's
a nice guarantee for a completely stand-alone system, but a "general
purpose" application should consider that it may be dealing with
files in NFS, AFS, or some other file system, and plan accordingly.
(here at RPI we have a lot of files in AFS space, and I've certainly
seen problems because some application depended on that POSIX promise,
but that POSIX promise is pretty meaningless in our real world. I
would not want to encourage any programmer to depend on that, unless
they are pretty much certain that the program will not have to deal
with files from external file systems.)
If the program is only for you in your organization, then the POSIX
promise is helpful. If you're sending the code off to "the world",
then you should not rely on that posix promise. Just my own opinion,
of course.
---
Garance Alistair Drosehn = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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