What
Claude Code can tell whether two paths are the same file by pairing a device number with an inode number, a per-file number the filesystem assigns. Some filesystems report a placeholder instead of a real inode number, and Claude Code then does not use it to identify the file.
The set of placeholders it recognises is larger now:
- 0
- -1
- 0xffffffffffffffff
- 2^64
Before, only 0 and 0xffffffffffffffff were recognised.
Why
On filesystems that report placeholder numbers, such as some network or Windows drives, different files are less likely to be mistaken for the same file.
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubt
Whether this applies only on Windows, and which features rely on this check, is not known.