[Zope] FYI: large files & linux.

[J C Lawrence]

On Sun, 5 Mar 2000 16:27:18 +1000 (EST) 
Andrew Kenneth Milton <akm@mail.theinternet.com.au> wrote:

> FreeBSD on intel architecture doesn't have the large file limit of
> Linux.

Not exactly true.  The *BSD's, like most of the rest of the world,
implement the basic POSIX file APIs which use a signed 32bit long
for file offsets in the base ABIs.  Ergo. if you are using the
equivalent of C's fseek(...SEEK_SET) (from beginning of file), you
are explicitly limited in the maximum size files you can process.

There are multiple hacked ways to work around this, one of which is
to allow offsets from SEEK_CUR to page-flip out into longer files
(just never use a SEEK_SET), or to implement another, parallel ABI
which takes a 63/64bit offset value.  Neither of which however helps 
the poor application which merely expected standards compliant
behaviour from its host and therefore didn't play by the local
"special rules",

-- 
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw@kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder@kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--