Can you control the inode a file is assigned?

[Larry Williamson]

Is there anyway to control the inode number a file is assigned,
assuming the inode is free?

For example...

If I think inode 1555 is not used in the root file system, and I want
to create a file say /etc/silly, can I do anything to ensure that
inode 1555 is used for this file?

I suppose one could create a temporary directory (on the appropriate
file system), start filling it with zero length files until the inode
of interest is assigned, then move that file to the desire place and
remove the temporary directory, but this sounds like too much of a
gross hack.

Any ideas?

-larry