Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!hsdndev!husc6!genrad!genrad.com!jpn From: jpn@genrad.com (John P. Nelson) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps Subject: Re: deskview question Message-ID: <41206@genrad.UUCP> Date: 25 Apr 91 17:02:01 GMT References: <1991Apr19.044110.7933@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> Sender: news@genrad.UUCP Reply-To: jpn@maxwell.genrad.COM (John P. Nelson) Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass. Lines: 19 >The info you see in a DIR is not updated until the DOS call that >closes the file is called. True. >In other words, it's nothing to worry about. In fact, you see the same thing >in UNIX. Uh, no. This is NOT true. The filesize is updated immediately under UNIX. The main reason MSDOS doesn't do this is because it doesn't cache any disk writes, and updating the directory every time the file size changed would be prohibatively expensive. Of course, UNIX caches writes to the disk, so it can update things properly without a performance penalty. john nelson uucp: {decvax,mit-eddie}!genrad!jpn domain: jpn@genrad.com