lfs confusion

[Andrew Dalke]

John Hunter
> Do you mean fd.seek?

D'oh!  Yeah.

> I did manage to read and write a 4GB file on crcdocs using the script I
> posted above.  Perhaps I don't understand what the "large" in large
> file really means.  I assumed it was 2**31 approx equal 2GB.  Has the
> default, non LFS limit, increased?

I think the answer is "it depends."

By default Python checks for large file support.  From
'configure'

if test "$have_long_long" = yes -a \
         "$ac_cv_sizeof_off_t" -gt "$ac_cv_sizeof_long" -a \
         "$ac_cv_sizeof_long_long" -ge "$ac_cv_sizeof_off_t"; then

cat >>confdefs.h <<\_ACEOF
#define HAVE_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT 1
_ACEOF

In other words, the default is to support large files
but only when the system supports >32 bit off_t.  CVS
says that was added in 1999.


The fileobject.c code for seek has

#if !defined(HAVE_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT)
         offset = PyInt_AsLong(offobj);
#else
         offset = PyLong_Check(offobj) ?
                 PyLong_AsLongLong(offobj) : PyInt_AsLong(offobj);
#endif
         if (PyErr_Occurred())
                 return NULL;

so my (corrected) statement about seeking to >2**31
should work.  Though I'm not sure now that sys.maxint
is the proper test since it might return 2**63 under
a 64 bit machine.  Hardcoding the value should work.


> I did do the normal incantation with the CFLAGS when compiling python
> for LFS on crcdocs.  

You're beyond my knowledge there.  I thought that
Python did the check automatically and didn't need
the CLAGS= ...

I compile from CVS source without special commands
and it Just Works.

				Andrew
				dalke at dalkescientific.com