http://www.mikeash.com/?page=pyblog/namecomment-conflict.html#commentsmikeash.com Recent CommentsSun, 10 May 2026 05:23:39 GMTPyRSS2Gen-1.0.0http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttp://www.mikeash.com/?page=pyblog/namecomment-conflict.html#commentsAtomic means that the operation is indivisible. In other words, you either get the complete original directory or the complete new directory, but never anything else, even if the dog trips over the power cord in the middle.&lt;br /&gt; <br />&lt;br /&gt; <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Atomic file swaps are usually pretty easy. You get the files on the same disk, make a system call, the OS swaps the pointers around and you&amp;#8217;re good. No matter what happens, you&amp;#8217;ll either get the old file still there or you&amp;#8217;ll get the new file. You&amp;#8217;ll never get a corrupted or empty file. This technique doesn&amp;#8217;t work for directories, though, so you just have to approximate it. <br />58833964dae2d391ffdc15f778dc7ed0Tue, 25 Jan 2005 01:07:00 GMThttp://www.mikeash.com/?page=pyblog/namecomment-conflict.html#commentsWhat&amp;#8217;s an atomic directory replace operation supposed to do? <br />9361e20e656e36e2c57bde8ae2b8d356Tue, 25 Jan 2005 01:04:00 GMT