prealloc(1)						      General Commands Manual						       prealloc(1)

NAME

       prealloc - preallocate disk storage

SYNOPSIS

       name size

DESCRIPTION

       preallocates  at  least size bytes of disk space for an ordinary file name, creating the file if name does not already exist.  The space is
       allocated in an implementation-dependent fashion for fast sequential reads and writes of the file.

       fails and no disk space is allocated if name already exists and is not an ordinary file of zero length, if insufficient space  is  left	on
       disk, or if size exceeds the maximum file size or the file size limit of the process (see ulimit(2)).  The file is zero-filled.

DIAGNOSTICS

       returns one of the following values upon completion:

	      0       Successful completion.
	      1       name already exists and is not an ordinary file of zero length.
	      2       There is insufficient room on the disk.
	      3       size exceeds file size limits.

EXAMPLES

       The following example preallocates 50000 bytes for the file

WARNINGS

       Allocation of file space is highly dependent on current disk usage.  A successful return does not indicate how fragmented the file actually
       might be if the disk is approaching its capacity.

AUTHOR

       was developed by HP.

SEE ALSO

       prealloc(2), ulimit(2).

																       prealloc(1)