g1lowy@cdf.toronto.edu (David A. Lowy) writes:

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>In article <22q8i1$a1j@aggedor.rmit.OZ.AU> rcopg@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU (Paul Gortmaker) writes:
>>haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes) writes:
>>
>>>There are other schemes; people have mentioned aliasing the rm command to
>>>move the target file to a "trash" directory; then you periodically clean
>>>out the trash directory of things that are a few days old.
>>
>>...I smile when I think what would happen if you used this to get rid of
>>a 50Mb core dump... (red light, whirring sound for a few minutes ;-)

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>Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

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>Any smart implementation of "mv" would certainly *not* cause a few minutes
>of "whirring" when moving any size file as long as the physical location (drive) of the file doesn't change. mv would simply rename the file. 
>I am sure Linux is no exception.

...well yes this is obviously true, but as you well know, most systems are
split across multiple partitions, if for no other reason than for damage con-
trol in the event of a system crash. So you would have to have a "trash"
directory on each filesystem/partition, or "mv" would resort to physically
copying the file, and deleting the source. Or, depending on "mv", it might
just give an error message like "cannot move <blah> across filesystems:
Not a regular file." if it was instructed to move an entire directory to
the ./trash directory on another partition.

Regards,
Paul.

===========================================================================
Paul Gortmaker c/o Microelectronics and Materials Technology Centre.
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,
Victoria, Australia. Ph  (61) 3 660 2601. FAX (61) 3 662 1921.
e-mail: paul@cain.mmtc.rmit.oz.au rcopg@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au

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>  Dave Lowy  (416) 921-1919                   g1lowy@cdf.utoronto.ca