[Ocfs2-devel] [PATCH 1/3] fs: Document the reflink(2) system call.

[Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>]

On Sun, May 03, 2009 at 04:08:59PM +0300, Boaz Harrosh wrote:

> As my first impression when I read the title of the patch, an English reflink
> I would imagine is something more to the left of above graph, between hard-link
> and soft-link, something like: link to an invisible dir-entry that is gone once
> all soft-links to it are gone.
> 
> So form my point of view. Call it something different like Copy-On-Write or
> COW.
> 
> I do understand that there is something very fundamental in my misunderstanding,
> but it was not explained below, in fact the below terminology confused me even
> more. Please explain?

It's simply a lazy copy, with interface for creating it similar to link(2).
That's all.