Re: large files: when ubiquitous?

phil-news-nospam_at_ipal.net
Date: 05/06/04 

Date: 6 May 2004 01:05:29 GMT

On Wed, 05 May 2004 19:16:49 +0200 tom <tom@dbsevice.com> wrote:
| Kasper Dupont wrote:
|> I think that you could change the default from 32 bits to
|> 64 bits by a minor change in a few of the standard include
|> files. I haven't tested it though, and some issues would
|> probably show up with broken programs making incorrect
|> assumptions.
|
| I don't think any program should make any assumptions about how big the
| return value from lseek() or other functions is. The return value is
| defined as off_t, which can be 64bit, so if you compile a program which
| tries to store the return value in a 32bit integer, you get warnings.
|
| The kernel defines the interface (in the headers), and the application
| really should use these definitions and not try to make any assumptions.
|
| Otherwise it's a a bad programing style.

Unfortunately, even the Linux community is not immune from bad programs. 

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| Phil Howard KA9WGN       | http://linuxhomepage.com/      http://ham.org/ |
| (first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/   http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
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