Re: Locking files for CLASH_DETECTION now supported on MS-Windows

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:03:13 -0800
> From: Paul Eggert <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden
> 
> One other thought.  Part of the reason GNU/POSIXish hosts use
> symbolic links is that readlink, symlink and unlink
> are atomic operations.  They let Emacs atomically create
> a lock, test whether a lock exists, and remove a lock.  This
> doesn't seem to be true of the new MS-Windows implementation,
> which uses open+write+close to create a lock and open+read+close
> to test whether a lock exists, neither of which is atomic.
> Is there some way this can be done atomically on MS-Windows?

Why is that important?  On Windows, as long as a file is open, no
other application can write to it or remove the file.  Is that the
"atomic" nature you wanted?

> Are readlink, symlink, and unlink atomic on MS-Windows?

Please define "atomic" for these cases, and I will think about that.