From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751602AbXDHSOG (ORCPT ); Sun, 8 Apr 2007 14:14:06 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751613AbXDHSOG (ORCPT ); Sun, 8 Apr 2007 14:14:06 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:52725 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751602AbXDHSOE (ORCPT ); Sun, 8 Apr 2007 14:14:04 -0400 Message-ID: <46193048.6000606@zytor.com> Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2007 11:11:20 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070302) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Christoph Hellwig , Theodore Tso , Ulrich Drepper , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: If not readdir() then what? References: <20070407203633.GA21555@thunk.org> <20070407233037.GA16508@infradead.org> In-Reply-To: <20070407233037.GA16508@infradead.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 04:36:33PM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote: >> this functionality, and it is highly questionable how useful it is, >> anyway. If you use telldir/seekdir and keep the cookie for a long >> time, even the POSIX-provided guarantees about files that are created >> and deleted between the telldir() and seekdir() points in time makes >> its utility highly dubious. > > It's not going to solve anything at all. We can't stop supporting > functionality that has been there forever. Well, the question is if you can keep the seekdir/telldir cookie around as a pointer -- preferrably in userspace, of course. You would presumably garbage-collect them on closedir() -- there is no other point at which you could. I personally suspect that hch is right -- this stuff has been there since time immemorial and it'll be hard or impossible to deprecate it. -hpa