[TUHS] Unix filesystem semantics history - files with holes

Ronald Natalie ron at ronnatalie.com
Thu Apr 11 15:28:57 AEST 2019


Define large?  It appears that filesystems going back to Research V4 supported sparse files.    The maximum file size went up from 2**24 in V6 to 2**32 in V7, and then broke that barrier in several of the subsequent file systems.

> On Apr 10, 2019, at 10:37 PM, Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs at netbsd.org> wrote:
> 
> When did the Unix filesystem add the semantics for "files with holes" (large,
> sparse files)?
> 
> Just an idle question that was sparked by a conversation I had today.
> 
> 	Erik <fair at clock.org>



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