From: wdoyle AT bode DOT cdsp DOT neu DOT edu (Patrick Doyle) Subject: Re: EXE has file junk in it 6 Jun 1997 17:29:35 -0700 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199706061721.NAA06623.cygnus.gnu-win32@cdsp.neu.edu> Original-To: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com In-Reply-To: (rminnich AT sarnoff DOT com) Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com I thought I would add my $.02 to the discussion. Some time ago, I discovered that "cp" was corrupting files that it copied. Upon investigation, I learned that the file I was copying from had large chunks of zero data. The default behavior for "cp" when it notices this condition is to create sparse files by performing an lseek() beyond the end of the file. On most normal operating systems, the OS zeros the disk sectors that are allocated as a result of this operation. Apparently, W95 does not do this. I solved the problem for "cp" by changing the default option for --sparce to be NEVER (boy do I sure love having source code!!!). I wonder if, perhaps, the linker attempts to create a sparse file by a similar trick. Would it be possible/reasonable to "fix" the seek() function supplied by CYGWIN to check for EOF and zero pad the file? -- --patrick wpd at delcomsys dot com (read as xxx AT yyy DOT com) - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".