bug#16409: Some amusing results with dd

[Pádraig Brady]

tag 16409 notabug
close 16409
stop

You're hitting various type and system limits.
In general it's best to keep bs=1 and increase the seek size to get this 
functionality portably.
Newer versions of GNU dd though will handle the count=0 case better and not 
alloc since:
http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commit;h=8901e010f
Note also the truncate command which is a more direct means to get this 
functionality.

thanks,
Pádraig.