Re: seek function always returns true

UNIX at least, it's explicitly allowed to seek past the end of a file (so that you can create files with holes in them). You'll probably only get an error if you try to read at that point.

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Comment on Re: seek function always returns true

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Re^2: seek function always returns true by johngg (Canon) on Jun 19, 2007 at 22:31 UTC
I had heard of files with holes but didn't realise the implicatons for `seek`. Looks like you do get the read error on Solaris. `$ ls -l xxxx -rw-r--r-- 1 johngg users 639 Jun 19 23:26 xxxx $ perl -le ' > open $in, q{<}, q{xxxx} or die $!; > seek $in, 1000, 0 == tell $in or die q{bad seek}; > print tell $in; > 10 == read $in, $buf, 10 or die q{bad read}; > print tell $in; > print $buf;' 1000 bad read at -e line 5. $` [download] Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: seek function always returns true by cdarke (Prior) on Jun 20, 2007 at 07:40 UTC
Same on Windows (SetFilePointerEx API).	[reply]