From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263496AbTLDUcG (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Dec 2003 15:32:06 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263526AbTLDUcG (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Dec 2003 15:32:06 -0500 Received: from dsl092-053-140.phl1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([66.92.53.140]:13032 "EHLO grelber.thyrsus.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263496AbTLDUcE (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Dec 2003 15:32:04 -0500 From: Rob Landley Reply-To: rob@landley.net To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Is there a "make hole" (truncate in middle) syscall? Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 14:32:23 -0600 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200312041432.23907.rob@landley.net> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org You can make a file with a hole by seeking past it and never writing to that bit, but is there any way to punch a hole in a file after the fact? (I mean other with lseek and write. Having a sparse file as the result....) What are the downsides of holes? (How big do they have to be to actually save space, is there a performance penalty to having a file with 1000 4k holes in it, etc...) Rob