>Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 11:55:08 +0200
>From: Guenther Grau <s_grau@ira.uka.de>

>How about this instead: Whenever someone tries to write over a textfile
>that is busy, the kernel renames the old file to some temporary name -
>preferably starting with a . (dot) - and removes this file when the
>program quits? It should be made a compiletime-option whether this feature
>should be active or not.

NFS does something like this already.  From SunOS' NFS(4P):

     When a file that is opened by a client is unlinked  (by  the
     server),  a  file with a name of the form .nfsXXX (where XXX
     is a number) is created by the client.  When the  open  file
     is  closed,  the  .nfsXXX  file  is  removed.  If the client
     crashes before the file can be closed, the .nfsXXX  file  is
     not removed.

-- 
Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>           http://www.shore.net/~mikel
VLSI Design Engineer         finger mikel@shore.net for PGP public key
Analog Devices, CPD Division          CCBF225E7D3F7ECB2C8F7ABB15D9BE7B
Norwood, MA 02062 USA                assert(*this!=opinionof(Analog));