Re: creating backups in temporary directories

[Davis Herring]

> Well, seems I misread the manual page for open/creat.  I thought that
> without O_EXCL, the file would get replaced.
>
> Well, then there still is the contorted way of hard linking /tmp/foo
> to /tmp/foo~, opening /tmp/randomfilename for write, renaming it to
> /tmp/foo and then finishing the write operation.

Why not just rename /tmp/foo to /tmp/foo~, then open /tmp/foo with O_EXCL?
 If it fails, then write (again with O_EXCL) to /tmp/randomfile so that
the user's work is on disk -somewhere-, and tell them that they have
enemies.

Davis

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