From: Lars Christensen <larsch@...>
Date: 2008-12-03T21:44:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Large file support on Windows

On Dec 3, 1:15 pm, Siep Korteling <s.kortel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Lars Christensen wrote:
> > Is there any way to get large file support on windows (>2^31 bytes)? I
> > need File.size, IO#seek and IO#tell to work with large files on
> > Windows.
>
> If the filesystem is FAT32 then 4GB is the upper limit, no matter what
> OS. ntfs has no limitation on filesize (other then the available
> diskspace). Converting FAT32 to ntfs is simple, but there is no easy way
> back.

Thanks for your reply, but its been 5+ years since i have used
FAT32 ;-). Even on NTFS, I can't access large files using the
mentioned functions.

The issue here is that Ruby relies directly on the ofs_t typedef which
is always 32 bit on Microsoft's C runtime. 64-bit file-size support
requires a workaround (using for example fseeki64), but it is not that
straight forward due to the way the IO interface is made in Ruby (it
reliese on ofs_t everywhere).

I was just wondering if anyone had made an effort to make support for
large files in Ruby on Windows or any platform without the convinience
of a 64-bit ofs_t.