Question

I’d like to index files in a local database but I do not understand how I can identified each individual file. For example if I store the file path in the database then the entry will no longer be valid if the file is moved or deleted. I imagine there is some way of uniquely identifying files no matter what happens to them but I have had no success with Google.

This will be for *nix/Linux and ext4 in particular, so please nothing specific to windows or ntfs or anything like that.

Answer 1

In addition to the excellent suggestion above, you might consider using the inode number property of the files, viewable in a shell with ls -i.

Using index.php on one of my boxes:

ls -i

yields

196237 index.php

I then rename the file using mv index.php index1.php, after which the same ls -i yields:

196237 index1.php

(Note the inode number is the same)