On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 03:53:56PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> > Then again, when exactly are writes atomic? Only when writing to disk?
> 
> Almost never!
> Probably only for writes of less than PIPE_MAX bytes to pipes.
> Maybe it depends on what you mean by 'atomic'.

As in, if I write() a meg of data to disk and I get a signal in the
middle, does the write() complete before the signal is delivered?
A friend of mine swears the write() completes first.
-- 
Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/
           On the community of supercomputer fans:
"But what we lack in size we make up for in eccentricity." 
  from Steve Gombosi, comp.sys.super, 31 Jul 2000 11:22:43 -0600