Re: st_dev:st_ino

[viro]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 09:02:02PM -0500, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard wrote:
 
> In order to efficiently implement tar, it is necessary to store the
> inode numbers for files with a link count greater than 1 in a hash
> table.  It would not be practical to keep open all of these files in
> order to ensure that the inode numbers remain valid.  Thus, a different
> unique identifier is needed, which is unique even for files that are not
> open.

Files that are not open could've been removed and replaced with something
completely different since your stat(2).
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