file size different from ls to du

[Bogdan TARU]

	Hi Drew,

 I have tried to create some files of myself, with 'spaces' in them
(holes?), but they don't act like this. So could you please explain what
'sparse' means, and the 'trick' to create them?

 Thanks,
 bogdan

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Drew Eckhardt wrote:

> In message <20030729171356.M2453-100000 at fw.office.icom>, bgd at icomag.de writes:
> >(17:13) bgd@(bgd)[~/temp] ls -alsh my_file
> >19120 -rw-r--r--  1 root  bgd  763M Jul 29 16:56 my_file
> >(17:13) bgd@(bgd)[~/temp] du -sh my_file
> > 19M    my_file
> >
> > So the 'ls -alsh' shows a file in size of 763M, but 19M of sectors are
> >really 'occupied'. Can someone explain, please?
>
> unix files can be sparse.
>
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> For those who do, no explanation is necessary.
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