[SAGA-RG] missing(?) method reporting last modification time

[Sylvain Reynaud]

A method "getLastModified" has already been added to our implementation 
(JSAGA) of the SAGA specification in order to fulfil a user request, but 
using it makes his code dependent on our implementation...

Consequently, I fully support your proposal.

Sylvain Reynaud


Thilo Kielmann a écrit :
> Folks,
>
> within our group we are currently delving into issues with accessing
> remote file systems. What strikes us is that such access is SLOW.
> As such, it would be very beneficial if one could find out when (and
> thus whether) a remote file or directory has been modified.
>
> While returning this piece of information sounds to be "trivial", it strikes
> us that the SAGA spec has no such call in the name space package (where files
> reside).
>
> In POSIX terms, this is the info returned by the stat system call
> (see: man 2 stat), with the st_mtime parameter.
>
> In Java, files have a method lastmodified().
>
> Both POSIX and Java report the time in milliseconds since 01/01/1970 (epoch).
>
>
> Of course, it looks like nobody has ever been thinking about such a use case,
> but here we are! Our feeling is that the last modification time is very
> essential meta data about files, so such a call should certainly be there.
> With our current problem certainly not being the only use case for finding
> out how old/new a given file or directory is...
>
> Our favourite proposal is to add a method that returns the last modification
> time to both ns_entry and ns_directory as this makes sense with physical as 
> well as with logical (replicated) files.
>
>
> Any reactions/objections ???
>
>
> Thilo Kielmann
>