Follow-up Comment #12, bug #17877 (project findutils): > If files are identified by the path, then you can hash the > path. If you use a good 64-bit hash the chance of collision > is practically zero. That's good enough.
Yes. And this solution is actually practical on pure 64bit archs only. On 32bit and dual archs it's not practial, because legacy apps (those compiled without largefile support) will get an EOVERFLOW for stat if the inode number doesn't fit in 32 bits. This is irrespective of whether the app actually would use st_ino or not. So in fact 64 bit inode numbers would _break_ a lot of currently installed systems. This is not a theoretical possibility, I've had bug reports in this area. Any other solutions? > I may sound a bit impatient here, but it's impatience for a > reason. Knowledge of file serial numbers must be hardwired > into thousands of programs. We can't change them all. If you > have to support inodes by some inefficient means, then I'm > afraid that's what you'll have to do. (Or, if you prefer, > you can warn users of these file systems that they will > break lots of programs. :-) Currently I have report of exactly 1 (one) application, that breaks. That is an alpha version of find, for which a solution is actually in the works (see gnulib-bugs ml). So I think your impatience is rather unwarranted. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?17877> _______________________________________________ Message sent via/by Savannah http://savannah.gnu.org/ _______________________________________________ Bug-findutils mailing list Bug-findutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-findutils