open() and EOFError

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 10:46 PM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> We've since modified our cleanup script to run lsof and skip purging any
> releases which are still in use :-)

LOL!

I have a computer on which I periodically build and install new
versions of a few pieces of software. Most of them don't keep running
indefinitely, but I once checked lsof and found that I had about a
dozen different versions of /usr/local/bin/pike, all executing happily
from memory. If one of them happened to go looking for some file (eg
an importable module), it'd end up picking up the latest version...
hopefully that's never a problem (chances are the different versions
aren't all *that* different - it'll just be that I pulled upstream's
edits and rebuilt).

I love how Unix will happily let you unlink a file and keep using it.
Sure, it's a pitfall for people who are trying to figure out where on
earth their disk space has gone ("I deleted that huge file, but my
disk's still full!!"), but it's soooooo much easier to work with than
"File in use, cannot delete".

ChrisA