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Re: stat(2) of a directory
- From: Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes <sthoenna at efn dot org>
- To: cygwin-talk at cygwin dot com
- Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 13:35:11 -0800
- Subject: Re: stat(2) of a directory
- References: <030520060245.29893.440A50E3000BB933000074C522007507440A050E040D0C079D0A@comcast.net>
- Reply-to: The Cygwin-Talk Malingering List <cygwin-talk at cygwin dot com>
On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 02:45:55AM +0000, Eric Blake wrote:
> > Under *nix, I can use stat(2) of a directory to know when its
> > contents have changed (file added or deleted from it).
> >
> > Under cygwin, this doesn't work because a directory's
> > modification time doesn't change when its contents change.
> >
> > Any recommendations as to how to monitor a directory to know
> > when its contents change under cygwin?
>
> On Win9x, this is basically impossible, since Windows does not
> provide that capability (try it - touch . is a noop on cygwin on
> Win9x). On Windows NT, the capability exists, but since
> Windows itself is not doing the timestamp update, it would
> severely slow cygwin down to open the directory and touch the
> directory's timestamp on every open or unlink, just to implement
> this requirement of POSIX/SUSv3 properly. It has been suggested
> in the past that perhaps a 'CYGWIN=posixly_correct' option
> be added that does all these slower corner cases, but no one
> has bothered to implement it.
Surely we're brave enough to use the originally sugggested
"posix_me_harder".