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Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 14:10:18 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-rcm AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Sparse file criteria malfunction - binutils produces sparse .exe & .dll files
Message-ID: <20030605181018.GD16253@redhat.com>
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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
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