On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 11:48:16AM -0500, John Muir wrote: > The attached test program creates a file, and then some hard links to > that file (file0 - fileN). > The test program then attempts to rename(fileN, file) for every hard > link created. > > My expectation is that the hard links file0 - fileN would simply > disappear, or that rename would respond with an error result and an > appropriate errno value indicating the problem. > > My observation is that the hard links file0 to fileN do not in fact > disappear and rename returns 0. > > Do I have the wrong expectations? If so, why should I have to stat the > files to determine if they are the same inode before I rename? This is a POSIX requirement. See http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/rename.html where it says, "If the old argument and the new argument resolve to the same existing file, rename() shall return successfully and perform no other action." There's not really much point in discussing whether your expectations are wrong or whether the extra work you have to do is silly ... POSIX says so, so we have to behave this way. Personally, I think this is an unexpected oversight on POSIX's part. The rationale refers to 'rename("x", "x");', and doesn't discuss hard links. Possibly something to raise with the POSIX ctte, but I doubt they'd be interested in changing this now ... perhaps if you can find some other unices which behave differently, you might have a shot. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
