Readonly Commands Modify Files

[meetmauro]

if you inspect a file using view, get, or validate the document is read and flushed to disk whenever it goes idle and re-serializes the XML. So bytes and mtime change even though no edit was issued.

[goworm]

Thanks for the report. I couldn't reproduce this: read commands (view/get/query/validate) open the file with a read-only handle in the one-shot path, and the resident's idle flush only triggers after a mutation command has marked the document dirty — running all four read commands on a fresh file and waiting past the idle window left sha256 and mtime unchanged.

A few questions to help narrow it down:

1. Was the file actually damaged (fails to open in Office, content lost), or did only the bytes/mtime change?
2. Which officecli version (officecli --version)?
3. Can you share the exact command sequence from a fresh shell that reproduces it, with sha256 before/after? In particular, was there any add/set/remove/batch/import earlier in the same session on that file? Mutations are applied in memory and flushed to disk later on idle, so a write landing after a subsequent read command can look like the read did it.

One known case where opening a file can rewrite it: malformed inputs (e.g. dangling relationships, non-standard XML encoding declarations) get repaired in place so the file becomes openable. If your file came from a non-Office producer, that could be it — happy to dig in if you can share the file or its origin.

[meetmauro]

thanks for answering.

I just created a test file:
mauro staff 610 KB Sun Jul 19 08:53:54 2026 test.docx
then with officecli --version 1.0.129
I did officecli view test.docx text
and my file now:
mauro staff 618 KB Sun Jul 19 08:55:37 2026 test.docx

see it changed size and mtime just by doing the view.

then tried again after updating to the latest 1.0.138 and this one does not have the same issue on the view command but the same issue on the get command:
before: mauro staff 610 KB Sun Jul 19 09:02:28 2026 test2.docx
command: officecli get test2.docx "/body/p[@paraid=5125082E]"
after: mauro staff 618 KB Sun Jul 19 09:04:59 2026 test2.docx

thanks!