User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4 Build Identifier: I was trying to see how xfce stores Desktop icon locations, and I came across this configuration file. I noticed that many old deleted or moved files are listed in this config. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Copy any file to Desktop (assuming you have desktop icons enabled) 2. Delete file 3. Open ~/.config/xfce4/desktop/icons.screen0.rc in a text editor Actual Results: The Desktop file still listed at the end of this rc file. Expected Results: Files that no longer exist on the Desktop should not show in this config file. Using default xfce install from Xubuntu Feisty (7.04)
Why does it matter? Functionality isn't affected.
Well, I figured it has a possibility of affecting performance. If a user downloads a few files every day to their desktop, and eventually removes them, this file would have a thousand or so extra invalid entries added every year. Granted I don't know what sort of algorithm is used when checking for icon placement, but with hundreds and possibly thousands of invalid entries in there, it just seems inneficient. I personally have 273 extra invalid entries in this file, and this is not even my primary computer.
Mmm, true, I suppose it couldn't hurt to rewrite the file from scratch each time it's saved. I guess there's also a potential (though weak) privacy issue as well: deleted file names sticking around after deletion.
Fixed in svn rev 26267.