Uses for access time

[Stephen J. Friedl]

In article <3672 at lynx.UUCP>, m5 at lynx.UUCP (Mike McNally ) writes:
> I am trying to convince some of my ``colleagues'' here that keeping track
> of last-access times of files is a useful pursuit for an operating system.
> [...]
> Are these reasons enough to justify the overhead (I think so)?  Are there
> other reasons that I am overlooking?

Starting on a related topic:

I believe the access time of a UNIX file must be updated after
each read (not just at the open).  Since mounting a filesystem
readonly turns this update mechanism off because the inode is not
writable, I would assume that this would speed up a filesystem
slightly: does anybody have any experience on this?

-- 
Steve Friedl           V-Systems, Inc.        Spaf for president!
friedl at vsi.com   {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl    attmail!vsi!friedl