From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Nathan Scott Subject: Re: Semantics of setting an extended attribute to empty vs removexattr? Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:41:05 +1000 Message-ID: <1222299665.4860.5.camel@verge.scott.net.au> References: <200809241519.19202.phillips@phunq.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org To: Daniel Phillips Return-path: Received: from prod.aconex.com ([203.89.192.138]:43784 "EHLO postoffice2.aconex.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751336AbYIYALg (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:11:36 -0400 In-Reply-To: <200809241519.19202.phillips@phunq.net> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 15:19 -0700, Daniel Phillips wrote: > Hi, > > Does anybody have an opinion on whether setting an extended attribute > to empty using the setxattr interface is supposed to be semantically > equivalent to removing the xattr using removexattr? attr(5) states... NAME attr - Extended attributes DESCRIPTION Extended attributes are name:value pairs associated permanently with files and directories, similar to the environment strings associated with a process. An attribute may be defined or undefined. If it is defined, its value may be empty or non-empty. XFS and extN certainly implement this property, I'd imagine all of the other filesystems supporting extended attributes do as well. cheers. -- Nathan