[RFC] Large file iostreams

[Paolo Carlini]

Pétur Runólfsson wrote:

>>I don't remember well the pros and cons of both, but this doesn't
>>seem such a difficult to resolve issue.
>>    
>>
>All 3 have the same problem; they are C99 types. int64_t best
>describes the intent, but not all platforms have stdint.h yet.
>long long is supplied by the compiler so it is available
>everywhere, and it's required to be at least 64 bits, but it
>may also be larger (I'm not sure it is on any current platform).
>
>All this can easily be handled with autoconf.
>
Agreed.

>I think it's best to do this change in two steps:
>1) Change streamoff to be a class type, but keep using long as the
>underlying type.
>2) Switch to lseek64 and change the underlying type.
>
Again, 100% agreed!

>There is one more issue I would like input on before preparing a
>patch. Is config/os/gnu-linux/fpos.h needed? It doesn't seem to
>provide much over the generic version, it doesn't support stateT
>other than mbstate_t, and having two versions of the code makes
>testing harder.
>
Honestly, dunno...
I suggest going ahead and preparing a draft patch: it looks like you
have (as per usual ;) the ideas already very clear... Great!

Paolo.