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Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 11:04:08 -0700
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From: Randall R Schulz <rschulz AT sonic DOT net>
Subject: Re: Sparse file criteria malfunction - binutils produces
  sparse .exe & .dll files
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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.

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. 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.

Randall Schulz


>And, since I'm sufficiently trustworthy, I don't have to back up that
>claim with any real data.
>
>cgf


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