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Re: touch --inside: new option for gzipped files
From: |
Jim Meyering |
Subject: |
Re: touch --inside: new option for gzipped files |
Date: |
Tue, 03 Jun 2003 10:18:30 +0200 |
Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> "touch --inside" is a best-effort operation, which will not work on
...
My point was that if touch actually fails to update a timestamp,
it must give a diagnostic. With your patch, using --inside
suppresses the failure and diagnostic in some cases. E.g.,
$ : > x
$ sudo chown root x
$ ./touch --inside x
$ ./touch x
./touch: cannot touch `x': Permission denied
[Exit 1]
>> And wouldn't it be better also to use O_NONBLOCK | O_NOCTTY, as
>> for the other open call?
>
> Maybe. One has to test whether "touch --inside /dev/tty" hangs or not.
> I can agree to it as long as you are sure that O_NONBLOCK, applied to
> regular files, has no effect (I'm not sure POSIX guarantees this).
Maybe??
Isn't the fact that the existing implementation has been using
those options for years without trouble enough of a guarantee?
Both were added in response to problem reports.
Getting the conceptually simple touch `right' has been surprisingly
tricky over the years. Any deviation from the current practice must
be very well justified, not the other way around.