Seeking beyond the end of the file

rajesh_b · 08-10-2006, 11:21 PM

hi,
Suppose i have a file of 100 bytes. And i have opened a file in append mode and if i do a seek of 100 bytes from there what should be the actual file size. 100 bytes or 200 bytes? Any data will be written there or not? If data is not there what will happen if we read the file? I hope i am clear.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Rajesh.

95se · 08-11-2006, 01:22 AM

I know this is going to sound annoying, but have you tried just doing a simple test? I just tried and it lets me seek past the end, and fills whatever I seeked past w/ zeroes. This is w/ the ANSI C functions (fseek and fwrite).

rajesh_b · 08-11-2006, 05:54 AM

yah i have tried with a sample program.
I am debugging that program. When i do a seek it returned successs. But when i do a ls on other terminal it is still showing old size only.

Regards
Rajesh

sundialsvcs · 08-11-2006, 06:19 AM

The directory might only be updated when the file is closed...

Think of the output of ls as being "the last reported file-size..."