Inode numbering

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Polytropon <edvax.de!freebsd at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:

> Let's assume we have a directory D with an inode number i(D).
> It contains a file F with its inode number i(F).
>
> May I state that i(D) < i(F)?

In general, no.  It might work in the special case where nothing
on the filesystem is ever moved or removed, and no hard links are
ever added.

As a simple example, suppose I have directories foo and foo/bar,
and file foo/baz, with i(foo) == 15, i(foo/baz) == 20, and
i(foo/bar) == 25, satisfying your criterion.  If I do

  mv foo/baz foo/bar

(so baz is now foo/bar/baz), I will have i(foo/bar) == 25 and
i(foo/bar/baz) == 20.