Re (tilly) 3: processing large files

I wouldn't take this particular one too badly. When Perl 5 came out it wasn't clear how the industry would handle the 32-bit barrier in file-size, so there was no way to write Perl support for it. You can hardly blame people for not writing support for what didn't yet exist.

According to Dominic Dunlop Perl had limited support for 64-bit files in 5.005_03, and it is (as noted above) a compile-time option in 5.6. But that compile-time option will not work on all platforms, and not all people on platforms that do support it have used it. And note that support for 64-bit files needs to be present in the operating system. If you are running Linux, that support is first present in 2.4. If you are running FreeBSD it has been there for a few years now.

Anyways all 32-bit computer applications have arbitrary limits imposed on them by the hardware. And the above question is the leading edge of a trainwreck we will see in slow motion over the next few years. The problem is that if your naming scheme is 32-bits, then it only has about 4 billion names. Waste a bit here or there, and you are limited to 1 or 2 billion. Segment your architecture in some way, and you find that real world limits tend to hit at 1, 2, 3, or 4 GB. Often with a hack (such as large file support or Intel's large RAM support) you can push that off in particular places. But, for instance, Perl on a 32-bit platform will never support manipulating a string of length 3 GB. It isn't going to happen. And Perl is not alone.

But thanks to Moore's law, it is a question of time before people want to do exactly that. And so as users needs keep on crossing the magic threshold people at first find their workarounds, and then will have to switch to 64 bit platforms. Which won't be pretty, but it will happen. And the trillion dollar question is whose 64-bit chip is going to win. Right now people tend to use alphas. AMD's proposal is (I have heard) technically worse but makes for the easiest upgrade from x86. Intel has a huge amount of marketing muscle. In 5 years the answer will seem obvious in retrospect and everyone else is going to be playing catch-up. And playing catch-up for a very long time - the 128-bit conversion is decades off and there is no guarantee that Moore's law will continue until then.

Comment on Re (tilly) 3: processing large files

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Re: Re (tilly) 3: processing large files by sierrathedog04 (Hermit) on Jul 04, 2001 at 23:29 UTC
The problem is that if your naming scheme is 32-bits, then it only has about 4 billion names. I agree with the point that you make, but what is this about "names?" I thought we were discussing the number of available addresses (and thus bytes) in a file, not the number of names.	[reply]
Re (tilly) 5: processing large files by tilly (Archbishop) on Jul 04, 2001 at 23:48 UTC
I consider a pointer to be the name of a byte in memory. Thus my mental model of the problem of seeking to a random spot in a large file is that you don't know how to name the location that you want. YMMV.	[reply]
Re: Re (tilly) 5: processing large files by sierrathedog04 (Hermit) on Jul 05, 2001 at 00:19 UTC
Good enough. Since Perl does not permit pointer arithmetic any distinction between addresses and names is meaningless. While I understand that internally Perl uses C uses pointers and even pointer arithmetic it is, as you say, only a mental map. Ultimately it is all just electrical charges on a circuit anyway. Perl itself doesn't really exist at runtime.	[reply]