On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 3:28 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote: > I presume that automagically reading them any time they changed was > both too much hassle and possibly dangerous: if a file is being > edited, it might get saved in intermediate (broken) states during the > editing session.
Even more so if you have multiple files (look, for instance, at PostgreSQL configs, where you might make simultaneous and connected changes to several related files); if you change one and it's activated before you change another, it might even have security implications - although more likely, it'd cause an outage (when legit connections get rejected because you haven't yet added the permission lines). The same problem occurs with PHP-based web sites, but there you don't get the option of holding over for a SIGHUP, so you're just stuck with uploading a new version of your site file-by-file, or *maybe* attempting an atomic rename of a directory. If you're lucky. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
