Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!nosc!crash!lairdb
From: lairdb@crash.cts.com (Laird Broadfield)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: How do I SHORTEN a file without rewriting it?
Keywords: truncation
Message-ID: <5289@crash.cts.com>
Date: 27 Oct 90 00:12:09 GMT
References: <1162@bilver.UUCP> <2830@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>
Organization: "Well, a head on top, an arm on each side, two legs...."
Lines: 23

In article <2830@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> bad@atrain.sw.stratus.com (Bruce Dumes) writes:
>In article <1162@bilver.UUCP> alex@bilver.UUCP (Alex Matulich) writes:
>>
>>Is there a way to shorten a file, that is, chop some data off the end of
>>it, so that it doesn't consume as much physical space on the disk?  The
>>file I have is too big to read into memory and write back out again, and
>>there is not enough room on the disk to write out a temporary file.
>
>Have you thought about using ftruncate()?

Okay, tell us where in K&R you find ftruncate.  I don't see it in
the TurboC manual, or K&R2.  Perhaps YOUR funky.lib has it, but not
everyone's does.  

As long as we're on the subject, does anyone have a neat-o method for
getting rid of records from the _beginning_ of a file?  (Standard preferred,
but if there's an MSDOS way, I'll accept it....)


-- 
--  Laird P. Broadfield                        | Year after year, site after
    UUCP: {akgua, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!lairdb  | site, and I still can't think
    INET: lairdb@crash.cts.com                 | of a funny enough .sig.