From owner-freebsd-current Sun Mar 5 22:57:48 1995 Return-Path: current-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id WAA24443 for current-outgoing; Sun, 5 Mar 1995 22:57:48 -0800 Received: from gate.sinica.edu.tw (gate.sinica.edu.tw [140.109.14.2]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id WAA24436 for ; Sun, 5 Mar 1995 22:57:45 -0800 Received: by gate.sinica.edu.tw (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA12594; Mon, 6 Mar 1995 14:55:30 --800 Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 14:53:14 +0800 (CST) From: Brian Tao Subject: Re: "Sparse" files? To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Cc: current@freefall.cdrom.com In-Reply-To: <199503060557.VAA00476@time.cdrom.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII content-length: 680 Sender: current-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 5 Mar 1995, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > Do we have any support for the likes of Linux's sparse files? Patrick > here says it saves around 25% for executables alone when run-length > compression is done for zero'd blocks. I thought ffs could already compress sparse files? Apple II ProDOS does this, but it isn't strictly "compression". I think it simply doesn't bother to allocate disk blocks for any that are completed filled with null bytes. There's no performance hit, and this is on floppy-bound 1-MHz //e's and //c's... :) -- Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw <-- work ........ play --> taob@io.org