3 Oct
2004
3 Oct
'04
2:21 p.m.
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004, Ron Hudson wrote:
Ok, What do you mean... It seems to me your saying
that if I rename the
file and name a new one in it's place the running process (simh) will
continue to access the old file..(perhaps by inode)
The directory entry ("foo.x") simply points to the inode that
is the file. So once a process has a file opened, it references
the file via the inode, so renaming the file has no effect.
THe only "danger" is if the process needs to re-open the file
(after closing it) and you've renamed it, but that's obvious,
huh.
(This is a secure way to handle temporary files: a process
opens a file then deletes (unlinks) it, as long as the file
is open, it (the inode) continues to exist; it will disappear
when all references to the inode disappear, eg. you close the
file. The advantage is, since the file doesn't have a name
(in the directory) no other process can open it.)