comment file naming

Bill Mill <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.pyblosxom.devel
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hello all,

I want to change the way that comments are named, but I also want to
solicit feedback from others before I do. All this comes about because
I'm writing a comment administrator plugin for pyblosxom. (it's not
yet in a usable state.)

Currently, comments are named "<file comment attached to minus
extension>-<time of comment file writing>.<comment extension>". This
has several drawbacks. First, 2 comments on a single story cannot be
made at the same time (imagine a dual-processor machine, or 2 machines
writing to a shared storage medium) without undefined results. Yes, it
is unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

Second, the date in the file name is used to sort the file entries.
While this is convenient, it puts significant meta-data into the
filename. Thus, changing the time of a post in such a way that
comments are correctly sorted involves renaming the comment whose time
has changed. Furthermore, the user is responsible for ensuring that no
two comments are set to have the same time, which seems a silly
requirement.

So, if you agree that the naming scheme should be changed, how should
it be changed? I will be glad to code up a patch, but I wanted to ask
for suggestions on how comments could be better named - preferably in
such a way as to not break backwards compatibility. (This would
require changing the comment sorting to use the pubDate inside the
file, but I think this should be done anyway).

My initial thought is "<file comment attached to minus
extension>-<randint(1, 100000)>.<comment extension>". The comments
plugin would simply have to assure that the file doesn't already
exist. Does anybody have a better naming scheme? Comments on this one?
Should the number be significant?

Peace
Bill Mill
bill.mill at gmail.com


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