Cached data validity

Abstract

Systems, methods and computer program products are disclosed for associating unique identifiers to files of a file system to indicate that the contents of the files have changed. In some implementations, a counter value associated with a file is incremented or decremented each time the file contents are changed. The unique identifier may be stored with the file contents and file metadata in the cache. When a process requests access to the cached file contents, the process requests the unique identifier from a system component and compares the unique identifier with the unique identifier returned by the system component. If the two unique identifiers are the same, the cached file contents are deemed valid and can be used by the process. If the two unique identifiers are different, the cached file contents are deemed invalid.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.