peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (06/21/89)
In article <13754@haddock.ima.isc.com>, suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) writes: > I probably would add it to an implemenation as a command to > fcntl(), using similar syntax to the locking primitives, with > similar power (being able to delete an arbitrary region, with or > without modifiing the "seek" positions of parts of the stream, > and allowing an implimentation to require "block aligned" deletes > if the end of the file is not one of the boundaries). Likely, no > one would use this version either, but it wouldn't require > another manual page... I would *LOVE* to be able to delete an arbitrary region of a file. Not to mention inserting it. I friend of mine did a file-system in Forth that allowed this, and it was very useful. Unfortunately, how is an application writer going to know what "block aligned" is going to mean on an arbitrary implementation of UNIX, and removing this requirement would excessively complicate the file system. One might as well go to a Xanadu-based FS... Sigh... -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.