file read dates
Chris Torek
chris at umcp-cs.UUCP
Fri Jan 31 05:18:09 AEST 1986
In article <183 at magic.ARPA> stewart at magic.UUCP (Larry Stewart) writes:
> Who looks at file read dates?
Anyone who wants to.
> Do any more-or-less standard Unix applications look at them?
E.g., ls -l, make: Yes.
> Are they worth the trouble of maintaining?
Yes.
> For example, a literal interpretation of the semantics of file
> read dates in Unix would require that the inode for a directory
> be re-written every time the directory was scanned for a file...
Only the in-core copy need be updated immediately. At sync() or
in-core inode reuse, the disk copy needs to be updated.
> Since one can mount a file system read-only, I presume this is not
> always done.
True enough. This is merely a matter of priority: You have to
assume that being mounted read-only is more important than having
the access times updated.
`Them's the breaks.'
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1415)
UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet: chris at umcp-cs ARPA: chris at mimsy.umd.edu
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