Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 14:10:18 -0400 From: Christopher Faylor To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: Re: Sparse file criteria malfunction - binutils produces sparse .exe & .dll files Message-ID: <20030605181018.GD16253@redhat.com> Reply-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com References: <004201c32902$3e92b020$78d96f83@pomello> <20030602133202.GC30498@redhat.com> <20030605115804.GL875@cygbert.vinschen.de> <20030605140748.GS875@cygbert.vinschen.de> <5.2.1.1.2.20030605104729.0236bb70@pop.sonic.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20030605104729.0236bb70@pop.sonic.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 11:04:08AM -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote: >Chris, > >At 10:44 2003-06-05, Christopher Faylor wrote: >>On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 05:56:05PM +0200, Markus Mauhart wrote: >>>But nevertheless send me an email in case you find out more about >>>since when typical unix/linux FSs support holes inside files ! >> >>Traditional UNIX has done this for at least 10 years. > >Jeez, Chris, I thought you were old like me. I probably am older. >Unix (as in that quaint old piece of software written for the PDP-11 by >Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson back in the 70s) has had sparse files >(created by the simple expedient of seeking beyond the end of the file >and then writing) for much longer than 10 years. I was just going with something I knew to be incontroveribly true. I was certain that the feature had been around forever but I wasn't going to research just how long. >This capability (which was transparent and not subject to user-level >control) was present since at least version 6 of progenitor Unix, the >first I ever used, which was current ca. 1976. Only the kernel and >things like file system checkers and file system dump and restore tools >that operated directly on disk structures had to know about sparse file >allocation. Thanks for the history lesson. I thought I remembered stumbling across this feature in the 70s. cgf -- Please use the resources at cygwin.com rather than sending personal email. Special for spam email harvesters: send email to aaaspam@sourceware.org and be permanently blocked from mailing lists at sources.redhat.com -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/