GNU bug report logs - #21942
Files with incorrect file sizes

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From: Stephan Müller <fruktopus <at> gmail.com>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: Jim Meyering <jim <at> meyering.net>, 21942 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#21942: [bug-diffutils] bug#21942: bug#21942: Files with incorrect file sizes
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2015 12:33:12 +0100

Am Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:39:57 -0800
schrieb Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>:
> I'd rather avoid a flag. User-visible complexity has a cost, and
> we're better off keeping things simple.
> 
> Is there some easy way to tell whether we're on a file system like
> procfs that has the bug?  Perhaps we can have a list of known good
> file systems.  But this is lower priority than getting the bug fixed.

Ok, I agree. A flag is not optimal.

I did some reading but I think you cant tell if a file system has that
issue. I slightly more elaborate approach than just checking for file
size 0 (as Jim did) would be to actually try to read such a file and
see if you can get anything from it. If yes, than diff by looking into
the content.

However, still procfs or worse debugfs could report anything as size.
The only proper fix would be to ignore file sizes entirely.

 ~stephan

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