Message-ID: <3FBD27A0.50803@techsource.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:44:16 -0500
From: Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com>
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To: Justin Cormack <justin@street-vision.com>
CC: Jesse Pollard <jesse@cats-chateau.net>,
       linux-kernel mailing list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: OT: why no file copy() libc/syscall ??
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Justin Cormack wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 19:08, Jesse Pollard wrote:

> If you really want a filesystem that supports efficient copying you
> probably want it to have the equivalent of COW blocks, so that a copy
> just sets up a few pointers, and the copy only happens when the original
> or copied files are changed.
> 
> But basically you wont get a syscall until you have a filesystem with
> semantics that only maps onto this sort of operation.


This could be a problem if COW causes you to run out of space when 
writing to the file.

This could also be a benefit if, for whatever reason, you have lots of 
copies of the same file that you never change.  But that sounds somewhat 
pointless to me.

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