Can directory files have holes in them ?

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <442 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>, tjc at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Tim Chown) writes:
> In article <1212 at accuvax.nwu.edu>, naim at accuvax.nwu.edu (Naim Abdullah (CSRL)) writes:
> > In 4.3bsd, is it possible for a directory file to have holes in it ?
> 
> Sure is.  Here's an example with the nrsdbm files that are commonly
> used in the UK as an online database of mail/ftp sites:

Your example shows a regular file with holes in it.  The original poster
was asking about a directory file with holes in it.  I, for one, cannot figure
any way you could get holes in a directory because the mechanism to generate
holes is to lseek beyond the end of the file and write some information, thereby
generating a hole between the old end of the file and the new data (assuming 
there was at least 1 full block between the two.

The kernel shouldn't have any reason to seek beyond the end of the file and
therefore shouldn't create a directory with holes in it - But this is 
only guesswork.


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