Re: Bug Emacs 21.3: write-file downcasing

[Kevin Rodgers <kevin.rodgers@ihs.com>]

Jason Rumney wrote:

> There are already places in the Emacs code where inodes are used (to
> deal with hard-links), making a function available for lisp to do
> such a comparison and encouraging people to use it rather than string=
> seems like a good thing to me.

Actually, I've run into a problem that I think is a result of Emacs assuming
each distinct file has a unique inode: On Network Appliance NFS servers, there
is a snapshot mechanism that is used to retain old versions of files at
configurable intervals.  Those files are stored in read-only subdirectories,
via pointers to the original disk blocks, and apparently they share inodes.
Here's a real example of some `ls -lrti` output:

   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1157 Feb  4 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.7/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1097 Feb  5 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.6/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1127 Feb  6 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.5/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1187 Feb  7 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.4/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1187 Feb  7 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.3/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1187 Feb  7 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.2/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1187 Feb 10 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.1/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1187 Feb 11 06:00 
.snapshot/nightly.0/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1187 Feb 11 06:00 
.snapshot/hourly.0/PipeStatus.rpt
   23541505 -rw-rw-r--   1 edoc     edoc        1217 Feb 12 06:00 PipeStatus.rpt

Even though these files have different contents, sizes, and timestamps, they
share the same inode number.

-- 
<a href="mailto:&lt;kevin.rodgers&#64;ihs.com&gt;">Kevin Rodgers</a>