'holes' in files

Q. What is 'holes' in files?


A. (By Andrew Gierth andrewg@microlise.co.uk)

The issue of 'holes' in files is thus:

Suppose a program creates a new file, seeks to a large offset, and then
writes 1 byte.

The file now consumes only 1 block of disk space, but appears to be large
(both in the byte size returned by stat(), and to a program that reads it
sequentially). The space that was never written to reads back as all
zeros, but consumes no space. This is referred to as a 'sparse file'.

The most common situation that causes these is use of the dbm package,
which takes advantage of this ability.

"Suppose a program creates a new file, seeks to a large offset, and
then writes 1 byte."

Once created, treat the sparse files as normal ones.

And i just wrote a simple program, hoping it would help.

 

 

 

/* 

 * Simple Demo to show how to create a sparse file(containing 'holes')

 * and then copy a file to it.

 */



#define RFILE "foo"

#define WFILE "bar"

#define BUFSIZ 8096

#define MODE  0644



#include <sys/types.h>

#include <sys/stat.h>

#include <fcntl.h>

#include <unistd.h>

#include <stdio.h>

#include <stdlib.h>



int main(void)

{

	int		rfd, wfd, n;

	struct stat	rstat;

	char		buf[BUFSIZ];



	if ((rfd = open(RFILE, O_RDONLY)) < 0) {

		perror("open error");

		exit(1);

	}



	/* Create the sparse file with the same size of RFILE */

	if ((wfd = creat(WFILE, MODE)) < 0) {

		perror("creat error");

		exit(1);

	}

	if (fstat(rfd, &rstat) < 0) {

		perror("fstat error");

		exit(1);

	}

	if (lseek(wfd, rstat.st_size - 1, SEEK_SET) < 0) {

		perror("lseek error");

		exit(1);

	}

	if (write(wfd, "/0", 1) != 1) {

		perror("write error");

		exit(1);

	}



	/* Now copy RFILE to WFILE; nothing special */

	if (lseek(wfd, 0, SEEK_SET) < 0) {

		perror("lseek error");

		exit(1);

	}

	while ((n = read(rfd, buf, BUFSIZ)) > 0) {

		if (write(wfd, buf, n) != n) {

			perror("write error");

			exit(1);

		}

	}

	if (n < 0) {

		perror("read error");

		exit(1);

	}



	return 0;

}