File list format

Each call to the external pool script specifies the pathname for a temporary file that contains a list of files to be operated on.

This file list defines one file per line as follows:

InodeNumber GenNumber SnapId [OptionalShowArgs] -- FullPathToFile

where:

InodeNumber is a 64-bit inode number.
GenNumber is a 32-bit file generation number.
SnapId is a 64-bit snapshot identifier.
OptionalShowArgs is the result, if any, from the evaluation of the SHOW clause in the policy rule.
FullPathToFile is a fully qualified path name to the file. When there are multiple paths within a file system to a particular file (Inode, GenNumber, and SnapId), each path is shown.
The "--" characters are a field delimiter that separates the optional show parameters from the path name to the file.

Note: GPFS™ does not restrict the character set used for path and file names. All characters except '\0' are valid. To make the files readily parsable, files or directories containing the newline character and/or other special characters are "escaped", as described previously, in connection with the ESCAPE '%special-characters' clause.