Re: size of files in /proc

Kevin Lentin (kevinl@cs.monash.edu.au)
Fri, 22 May 1998 17:20:49 +1000

On Thu, May 21, 1998 at 12:39:12PM +0000, Ton Hospel wrote:
> These implementations of cp are RIGHT. And no, we wouldn't have that
> problem with finite sized files, because you may NOT conclude that
> if you asked the size and later really read it, it will still have that
> size. Zero is special in that if you know the size, you know the full
> contents, which is not true for any other number, in all other cases the
> program HAS to read the contents to avoid a race.

I don't get this bit. Why can't there be a race? File gets created, size 0.
NFS stats. File gets written to. NFS says no data in file. EOF.
Comapred to:
File has 100 bytes. NFS stats. File gets appended to. NFS reads and returns
200 bytes.

Or does NFS only ever return as much data on a read as a previous stat said
there was to read?

> I see this argument as another reason to fix /proc

But HOW, when you don't know the sizes of the files?

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