Moving open files

[Bart Silverstrim]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

> When a human moves a stapler from one drawer to another, he has no
> reason to suspect that any modification to the stapler (such as
> refilling it) would cause a duplicate stapler to appear in the old
> drawer. Likewise with the movement of open files. This seems to be a
> real 'gotcha' or trap that one could very easily fall into.

Staplers aren't abstractions that would easily allow for one person to 
refill it while another person is stapling with it. For this case, it's 
a bad analogy.

>> That said, if OO kept the file
>> open, then mv could move it elsewhere, but OO would still write to the
>> _file_ not create a new file with the original name.  

I think the application had a file handle it was manipulating, not a file.

You get similar weird behaviors if under Windows someone has permissions 
to create a file but not alter the file. They can create a document and 
open it under Office, but not actually save anything to it once the 
initial file is written out since they can create but not alter it.

>Plus, it really is
>> badly behaved if it writes a "new" file - when it should know it's
>> modifying an old file - and doesn't bother to inform the user that the file
>> moved.  _That_ should be fairly simple to both fix and get attention for.

It's an Office application, not a file manager. File management falls 
under duties for the Operating System...