On 8/10/09, Glenn Fowler <[email protected]> wrote: > > here's a description of SEEK_HOLE and its companion SEEK_DATA > > o If whence is SEEK_HOLE, the offset of the start of the > next hole greater than or equal to the supplied offset > is returned. The definition of a hole is provided near > the end of the DESCRIPTION. > > o If whence is SEEK_DATA, the file pointer is set to the > start of the next non-hole file region greater than or > equal to the supplied offset. > > they are optimzations to aid in the discovery of holes on the read side > I believe the issue is not whether the ast code faithfully reproduces holes > when copying files (although the ast code may convert runs of 0's in real > data > to holes),
This conversion of 0's to holes is an actual problem for databases. A hole in a file may reflect 'no records here' for a database while 0's reflect that the record is valid and contains 0's as data. Irek _______________________________________________ ast-developers mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.research.att.com/mailman/listinfo/ast-developers
