Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!umd5!purdue!gatech!udel!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!postman+uid0
From: rpd@cs.cmu.edu (Richard Draves)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Uses for access time
Message-ID: <oWRIGMy00hk=IOy0dv@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 27 Apr 88 02:16:56 GMT
References: <3672@lynx.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Carnegie Mellon
Lines: 9
In-Reply-To: <3672@lynx.UUCP>


Hmm, Vice doesn't keep track of the last-access time for a file, only the
modified time.  (If you stat() a Vice file, the mtime, ctime, and atime are
always the same.)  The rationale is that if a client writes a file, it has to
talk to the server anyway to communicate the new data, so it doesn't extra to
update the modified time.  However, updating the access-time would require the
client to talk to the server when the client tries to read a cached file.  The
current Vice implementation goes to great lengths to unburden the servers, and
this was considered unacceptable.

Rich