shredding files on a flash drive

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 02:19:14AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> It depends what you mean by "edit".  Most forms of editing rewrite the
> whole file.  Directories and formal databases are significant exceptions.

Depends on the program.  I know mutt for example rewrites mbox files by
only rewriting from the point of the change, which helps a lot since
most of the time people are making most of the mail changes to the
newest messages which are the last ones in the mbox file.

I believe a number of programs do in place changes.  Databases are
probably the biggest users of in place edits though.

With the compressed file system though your database would become
useless and the other programs would not gain anything from their
efficient designs.  You would always be rewriting everything.

--
Len Sorensen
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