From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <46d59a9c8fa654a15eefe349621a5f11@vitanuova.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] hget
From: rog@vitanuova.com
In-Reply-To: <020f01c415d7$46afe120$c002a8c0@SOMA>
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Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 00:01:06 +0100
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> truncation is better than duplication?  explain that to me ...

a file is usually treated as a stream of bytes.

particular files will obey particular conventions.  for instance, a
body of data will follow a header.

conventions for truncation are well defined, easily observed, and
usually checked for (premature eof).  if however an arbitrary part of
the file can be repeated, there's no way of knowing how it can happen,
no way of knowing when it has happened, and nobody checks for it.

hence my statement.