On 26 Mar 2001, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
> > not holes. if it were holes, they the COPY would be larger then the
> > original.
>
> Why? It can be both ways, but more likely the copy would be smaller.
not realy. do you know what 'holes' in files mean? when a program writes
to a file, it may seek() to a location beyond the end of the file, and
write data. no blocks are allocated for the location between the previous
end of file, and the newly written data, and any read() from those
locations will return a block of 0-s. this is known as 'a whole'.
most file copy programs are not aware of wholes, and thus when copying
files with holes (that originaly occupied a small ammount of disk space)
actually write out all those zeros into real disk blocks, thos making the
copy larger.
another notion is that of 'half used blocks'. disk blocks are allocated in
fixed-size units. thus, the ammount of disk space a file actually occupize
is not the same as the ammount of data written into the file.
now, which of these two notions did you refer to? (or there is a 3rd
notion i am not aware of? enlighten me).
> Whichever system has more holes would show larger size indu,
> caeteris paribus, and the original is more likely to have holes.
why??
--
guy
"For world domination - press 1,
or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy
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