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From: rob@b15.INGR.COM (Rob Lemley)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: holes in files
Message-ID: <1820@b15.INGR.COM>
Date: 12 Dec 90 22:47:37 GMT
References: <1990Dec5.052124.28435@erg.sri.com> <10960:Dec507:07:4190@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1990Dec05.155248.8929@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> <6193:Dec618:43:4390@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Organization: Intergraph Huntsville
Lines: 20
th: b15!rob

In <6193:Dec618:43:4390@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

>In article <1990Dec05.155248.8929@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:

>> For that reason, an entirely reasonable strategy is always to leave a hole
>> when writing a full block of zeros.

>This is poor advice. An application may depend on the sizes of files it
>creates.

Examples please.  As stated before, when READING a file (ie: via open/read),
there is NO WAY to determine if a block of zeros constituted an actual hole
in the file or a disk block full of zeros.

Rob
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Rob Lemley                               205-730-1546
System Consultant, Scanning Software
INTERGRAPH Corp                          ...!uunet!ingr!b15!rob
Huntsville, AL                       OR  b15!rob@ingr.com