Unix Programming - Problems in the Design of Unix - Unix Assumes a Static File System
Unix Assumes a Static File System
Unix has, in one sense, a very static model of the world.
Programs are implicitly assumed to run only briefly, so the
background of files and directories can be assumed static during their
execution. There is no standard, well-established way to ask the
system to notify an application if and when a specified file or
directory changes. This becomes a significant issue when writing
long-lived user-interface software which wants to know about changes
to the background.
Linux has file- and directory-change notification
features,[156] and some versions of BSD have copied them, but
these are not yet portable to other Unixes.
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