- From: Eric Uhrhane <ericu@google.com>
- Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:58:16 -0700
- To: Darin Fisher <darin@chromium.org>
- Cc: Web Applications Working Group WG <public-webapps@w3.org>
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Darin Fisher <darin@chromium.org> wrote:
> I noticed that FileWriter.truncate() can only be used to shorten a file, and
> there does not seem to be a good way to grow a file using FileWriter without
> appending data to it. By contrast, the POSIX ftruncate function can be used
> to grow a file (zero padding it):
> From ftruncate(2):
> "If the file previously was larger than this size, the extra data is lost.
> If the file previously
> was shorter, it is extended, and the extended part reads as null bytes
> ('\0')."
I see no reason we can't add this; I just left it off for simplicity,
but your use case makes sense.
> I think there are use cases for wanting to grow a file in advance of writing
> data to it. For example, you might implement a system that downloads chunks
> of a file in parallel using multiple XMLHttpRequest objects. The chunks may
> arrive out-of-order.
> A possible alternative API would be to support seeking beyond the end of the
> file or writing to a starting offset that is beyond the length fo the file.
> It may also be reasonable to support all of those in addition to truncating
> to an offset greater than the length of the file.
I think this may be a little messier, and there's no reason to make up
a new paradigm when the POSIX one is well-known and sufficient.
If nobody objects, I'll just add it.
Eric
Received on Friday, 27 August 2010 22:59:05 UTC