[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #54102] Origin specifier in fseek

[Michael Leitner]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?54102>

                 Summary: Origin specifier in fseek
                 Project: GNU Octave
            Submitted by: mleitner
            Submitted on: Tue 12 Jun 2018 07:27:27 AM UTC
                Category: Octave Function
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Documentation
                  Status: None
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 4.4.0
        Operating System: GNU/Linux

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Details:

Try


fid=fopen("bla","w");
fseek(fid,0,"bof")
fseek(fid,0,'SEEK_SET')
fseek(fid,0,0)
fclose(fid);


Apparently at some point the C-inspired way of specifying fseek origin has
been dropped to follow Matlab and allow "cof"/0, "bof"/-1 and "eof"/1.
However, this is not reflected in the documentation, which still speaks of
'SEEK_SET'/"cof" and analogues. I think that it would not hurt to relax with
respect to Matlab and allow all three possibilities. 

Further, is it really the best option to refuse any fseeks beyond the
end-of-file? This is more or less the standard way in C to cheaply allocate
large files. Yes, it seems that Matlab refuses, but this is not even
documented as I see it. You could also do it and just throw a warning in this
case. Or is there another good way to generate large files? Obviously an
fwrite of zeros is suboptimal.




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