[Python-Dev] wait time [was: Ext4 data loss]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:25:59 am Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> R. David Murray <rdmurray <at> bitdance.com> writes:
> > By the way, I would not like to see python programmers encouraged
> > to make the same mistake that sqlite3 made.  The decision about how
> > aggressive to be on flushing data to disk should be in the hands of
> > the _user_, not the application.
>
> I disagree. The user usually does not know which kind of flushing is
> needed in order for his data to be safe. Actually, he probably
> doesn't even know what flushing means, and that files are ever
> "closed".

Surely it depends on what sort of user you're talking about, and that is 
often application or OS specific. As a sweeping generalization, Mac 
users may be more tolerant of slow saves and less tolerant of data loss 
than Windows users, laptop/notebook users will probably expect the app 
to honour whatever setting they put in regarding HDD behaviour, and 
Linux users may expect more fine control over application behaviour and 
be willing to edit config files to get it.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano