*BSD News Article 84822


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From: eggert@twinsun.com (Paul Eggert)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6
Date: 9 Dec 1996 13:59:49 -0800
Organization: Twin Sun Inc, El Segundo, CA, USA
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References: <32986299.AC7@mail.esrin.esa.it> <5844u3$mb@saltmine.radix.net> <587t33$2va@anorak.coverform.lan> <casper.32a7ec57@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <589l19$shp@cynic.portal.ca> <58a5e4$3kv@server05.icaen.uiowa.edu> <casper.32aa9981@mail.fwi.uva.nl>
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casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:

> As others have pointed out, fsetpos/fgetpos are the preferred
> interfaces.  

They may be preferred to fseek, but that's not saying much.
Few programs use fseek because of its poor performance and questionable
portability (other than to seek to the beginning of the file).
Even fewer programs use fsetpos and fgetpos, since they're newer (and
thus not supported everywhere).   And fsetpos and fgetpos _still_ don't
let you do arithmetic on file pointers.

Most programs that need to seek use lseek, and lseek is where you'll
have problems when porting to Solaris 2.6's new file model.