Re: OT: why no file copy() libc/syscall ??

From: Andreas Dilger
Date: Thu Nov 20 2003 - 16:12:19 EST


On Nov 20, 2003 15:44 -0500, Timothy Miller wrote:
> This could be a problem if COW causes you to run out of space when
> writing to the file.

Not much different than running out of space copying a file.

> This could also be a benefit if, for whatever reason, you have lots of
> copies of the same file that you never change. But that sounds somewhat
> pointless to me.

Umm, snapshots-in-time of your /home, /usr/src, etc? Copies of the kernel?
Lots of reasons to have mostly-identical versions of files. Almost like
hard links, except you aren't at the mercy of your editor/patch to do the
right thing when modifying one of those copies.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/

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