extended attributes

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 06:25, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> > 
> > I've found that when I edit a file with vi or gedit I lose all of the 
> > user extended attributes associated with that file.  A stat reveals that 
> > the inode number has changed.  Is this the reason why I'm losing the 
> > extended attributes?  Is vi and gedit creating a new file?  Is it easy 
> > to change this behaviour?
> > 
> I don't know for sure but that makes sense to me. When vi is used, at
> least, a temporary copy of the file is created to be edited. It would
> not surprise me that when you save the file a new file with a new inode
> is created.

If it did that, you would not be able to edit files where you
have write permission on the file but not the directory
containing them and hardlinked files would no longer be
linked.  It should be copying the temp file contents back
over the original at least in cases where it can't duplicate
all the attributes and links.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com