Re: making GNU ls -i (--inode) work around the linux readdir bug

[Phillip Susi]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> From what I've read, POSIX does not specify this.
> If you know of wording that is more precise, please post a quote.

That was my point.... the standard does not specify that this behavior 
is an error, and since every unix system since the dawn of time has 
behaved this way, it is NOT an error as you claim.

> As far as I've heard, only one application would be affected
> adversely by this change (extra stat calls would hurt performance),
> and that application, "magicmirror" is not widely used -- since I
> found no reference to it in the first few pages of search results.

EVERY application that invokes ls -i is effected.

> If you know of other applications that run "ls -i" and depend on
> the post-coreutils-6.0 behavior of not stat'ing some files,
> please let me know.

EVERY user of ls wishes it to be as quick as possible.  Since it has 
been shown that simply returning the inode number from the d_ent is not 
really an error, and that fetching the different number from stat 
provides no actual benefit, slowing down ls for that purpose is a 
regression, not a bug fix.