Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: off_t (was unix question: files per directory)
Message-ID: <16879@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 89 05:34:05 GMT
References: <24110@beta.lanl.gov> <8420@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 13

In article <8420@xanth.cs.odu.edu> kremer@cs.odu.edu (Lloyd Kremer) writes:
>Why was it decided that off_t should be signed? ...
>it doesn't make sense to have a negative offset into a file.

You do need to be able to seek backwards, but that excuse is not
good enough.  It seems likely that off_t is signed because it has
always been signed.

Still, 2^32-1 is not big enough; we need 64-bit integers.  (The
4.2BSD file system format has room for 64 bit sizes.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris