[AFS3-std] AFS3 support for sparse files (SEEK_HOLE&co)?

[Harald Barth]

> Holes in these files represent areas of 'no data' or 'no data
> calculated here yet' while real data - even huge ranges of '\0' bytes
> - represent calculated areas.

I think that is asking for future trouble if you want to make a
difference between "hole" and '\0' and preserve that difference. The
file system might consider a hole to be "small" (undefined how much
exactly) and write zeros instead. Think as well about backup softare
which might or might not support holes and might or might not recerate
restores as sparse files or even sparse files with more holes if big
amounts of zero byte stretches were found. Not even all cp and rsync
commands on all platforms behave the same in that respect.

If you rely on that, you'll have to do a lot of checking with all your
software, including every new version. Good luck.

Harald.