Moving a File While It's In Use -- How Does it work?

Posted by Zaz on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Zaz
Published on 2011-02-27T20:20:51Z Indexed on 2011/02/27 23:27 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 175

Filed under:

linux

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osx

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filesystems

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file-management

I've noticed that on non-windows OS.... ie linux/mac i can do things like: - Send a zip to a friend over aim - Delete the file while it's in transfer

And the transfer does not fail.

Or, I can do operations like.. - start a movie - erase the file - the movie still plays to completion (read from disk, not just buffered in memory)

Although the files are being "deleted", as i mentioned, they are actually being moved to a different location on the file system... ie a Trash directory or something. So it seems to me like the OS uses a pointer @ the file that is updated when it moves rather than accessing the files directly.

Can anyone shed some light on how this AWESOME capability is actually implemented? I'm not even sure what to google to learn more about it.

thank you.

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