From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2003-05-08T22:40:51+09:00
Subject: Re: PStore and tempfiles - bug?

On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 10:52:46AM +0900, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> q1: Why is it creating a tempfile? 
> a1: It's not a tempfile, it's a backup file.

I don't need a backup.  It should be possible to turn this off.

But it looks to me like it's not a backup.  It looks like the file is
created in case there is an exception thrown during file.truncate();
if this happens, the backup is renamed (not copied) over the original.

> q2: Why isn't it removed when the program is complete?
> a2: You can't remove a backup file.  If you do, it's no longer a backup. ;-)

There is code in pstore.rb to remove the backup file:

        if @abort and !orig
          File.unlink(@filename)
        end

But orig is never false, so the backup never gets removed.  I don't know
what the author's intention was, but I'm sure unreachable code was not
it.

> q3: are there any potential problems associated with the tempfile or
>     can I safely ignore this issue?
> a3: You can ignore it, until you need backup.

I agree, but note that the backup file disappears if writing to the file
fails.  You cannot depend on its existence.

Paul