Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 10:40:59 -0800 (PST) From: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> To: robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Portable way to compare struct stat's? Message-ID: <199911181840.KAA03119@vashon.polstra.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.991116103055.6960A-100000@fledge.watson.org> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.991116103055.6960A-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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In article <Pine.BSF.3.96.991116103055.6960A-100000@fledge.watson.org>, Robert Watson <robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org> wrote: > On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, Wes Peters wrote: > > > On a single system, if st_dev and st_ino are equal, you must be > > referring to the same object. If not, I'd like to hear about it. > > This assumption has always caused lots of pain and suffering for > distributed file system people -- in a distributed file system, the > requirement that you can generate a unique 32 bit number for each > file or directory visible in the FS is a fairly arduous one. 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. John -- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up." -- Nora Ephron To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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