Notes on Tie::MmapArray

Extending files

According to W. Richard Stevens (Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, Addison-Wesley, 1992), ftruncate() may or may not be able to extend a file, but if it can the it probably creates a hole. On Linux 2.2 it does seem to be able to extend a file.

If ftruncate() doesn't work, then another option is to write a single null byte at the last byte of the required length. This should extend the file, creating a hole between the block containing current end of file and the the block containing the new end of file. Of course if the file needs to be extended such that the new end of file is in the same block as the current end of file then nothing needs to be done (mmap still needs to have mapped in the required address space).

If we need to extend a file and the file is already mmaped then we may need to call munmap() and then mmap().

Test Strategy

Need to test normal processing and error handling.