Names to ids

[Chris Devers]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2006, David Landgren wrote:

> Andy Armstrong wrote:
> > On 25 Jan 2006, at 13:56, Andy Armstrong wrote:
> > > Is your numeric id allowed to be longer than 32 bits? If not the first
> > > eight characters will do fine - you only have a 32 bit numberspace to use
> > > anyway. If not what (if any) length constraints does the numeric id have?
> > 
> > Or - if it's a unixish system - what about the inode?
> 
> If the file gets copied or restored or the partition gets fscked (literally
> &/or figuratively), the inode could change.

But does that matter? 

What is really being sought here? 

Should these two have the same number, or different numbers?

  $ ls /{opt,usr/local}/share/misc/my_file
  /opt/share/misc/my_file
  /usr/local/share/misc/my_file
 
Should these two have different numbers, or the same number?

  $ ls -l /{opt,usr/local}/my_file
  lrwxr-xr-x  [...]  /opt/my_file -> /usr/local/my_file
  -rw-r--r--  [...]  /usr/local/my_file

Should these have different numbers, or the same number?

  $ touch ~/my_file
  $ mv ~/my_file ~/my_renamed_file
  $ touch ~/my_file

Are these two going to have the same number?

  $ cp ~/my_file /tmp/my_file

In other words, do the contents of the file, the location in the 
filesystem, and the location on disk have any bearing on how these 
name/number pairs should be handled?

What is really being sought here? 


-- 
Chris Devers
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL