Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!udel!rochester!kodak!uupsi!sunic!dkuug!iesd!iesd.auc.dk!fischer From: fischer@iesd.auc.dk (Lars P. Fischer) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: 2Gb core file Message-ID: Date: 7 Feb 91 20:48:10 GMT References: <5900@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991Feb3.161920.26520@dg-rtp.dg.com> <10365:Feb309:39:5791@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Sender: news@iesd.auc.dk (UseNet News) Organization: Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Aalborg Lines: 26 In-reply-to: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu's message of 3 Feb 91 09:39:57 GMT >>>>> hunt@dg-rtp.rtp.dg.com writes: hunt> My bet is that there are very large unallocated holes in the file. hunt> That's one reasonable way to make core files. >>>>> On 3 Feb 91 09:39:57, brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) said: Dan> Well, one school of thought says that this is a quite unreasonable way Dan> to make core files---or any files---when the holes are so easy to avoid. Dan> It's remarkable how often users accidentally fill up disks under SunOS Dan> by copying or otherwise processing those core files. One could argue, quite reasonably, that this is a problem with cp. Allowing files with holes is a nice feature of UNIX. That some tools have not been designed to process them should not discourage their use. Dan> It's also quite a Dan> waste of time to do ``strings'' on a 2GB file with practically nothing Dan> but nulls; if the same information were stored in 160K, things would run Dan> a lot faster. Never had any problems with this. /Lars -- Lars Fischer, fischer@iesd.auc.dk | Beauty is a French phonetic corruption CS Dept., Univ. of Aalborg, DENMARK. | - FZ