Subj : Idea: Filesystem signals
To   : comp.os.linux
From : adams_forum
Date : Sat Aug 21 2004 08:52 am

Filesystem signals:

I've been thinking about how file managers work.  You may have noticed
that when you are viewing a list of files in a graphical file manager,
and you delete a file with another program, the changes are sometimes
not registered in the file manager until you issue some kind of
"Refresh" command.  Some file managers do reflect the changes
automatically; but it's my guess that these programs continually poll
the currently displayed directory every second or so to see whether it
has changed.

I'm wondering what people think of following idea.  Whenever a file in
the computer's filesystem is changed, a signal is sent to all
processes.  Maybe best is for the signal to include (somehow) the
specific file that was modified.

Of course, the default signal handler for this signal would do
nothing, so programs would have to write a specific signal handler if
they want any processing to be done.

What kind of problems would this introduce?  Would it violate the
POSIX standard or something?

Maybe something like this already exists or I'm completely missing
something; please tell me about it if so.

.