A file change log tracks changes to the namespace (files and directories) of a file system. Depending on the implementation, a file change log will record changes such as creates, links, unlinks (deletions), renamed files, data changes, and metadata changes (for example, ACLs and permissions). A file change log can be accessed as a file in the file system, or hidden and accessed only programmatically.
A file change log differs from a file system's journal.
Such a log can serve at least two purposes.
First, some applications must scan an entire file system to discover changes since their last scan. By reading a file change log, they can avoid this scan. Scanning applications include backup utilities, web crawler, search engines, and replication programs.
Second, the log can serve as an audit record for activity in a file system.
Famous quotes containing the words file, change and/or log:
“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“The appeal of the New Right is simply that it seems to promise that nothing will change in the domestic realm. People are terrified of change there, because it’s the last humanizing force left in society, and they think, correctly, that it must be retained.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)
“‘T is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine stump. With it comes a Latin grammar,—and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)