"Inserting" a line in a text file?

[Kragen Sitaker]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
> I wonder whether a journalling/logging file system would support
> an insertion operation *without* the need to rewrite the whole file.
> I know you can overwrite portions of the file without touching
> the current content (it appends an operation recording that a range
> has been overwritten) and you can append easily, but do they
> understand insertion?

Typical log-structured filesystems don't support insertion and
deletion, but a log-structured filesystem could indeed support these
operations in an efficient manner.