Generating generations of files

[Cameron Simpson]

On 30Apr2019 11:24, DL Neil <PythonList at DancesWithMice.info> wrote:
>On 30/04/19 8:17 AM, MRAB wrote:
>>Why would generation numbers result in a 'ripple' of renaming?
>>
>>You're assuming that "output.rpt.1" comes after "output.rpt.2", but 
>>it could just as well come before (generation 1 precedes generation 
>>2, etc.). You're just left with the exception of the unnumbered 
>>"output.rpt" being the latest.
>
>I was!
>
>However, that's the way statisticians and mathematicians think, and 
>thus expressed themselves (I 'swapped' the minus-sign for a fileNM 
>separator):
>
>(current) version	version.rpt
>-1 version		version.rpt.1
>-2 version		version.rpt.2
>etc

For a counter example, I'm pretty sure the VMS built in file versioning 
went on the scheme MRAB described: rewriting version.rpt caused the old 
version to become "version.rpt;n" where n counted up from 1.

Of course this is an arbitrary convention.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>