Shell Programming and Scripting

Typically when you're talking about empty blocks (aka sparse files) they are considered to contain char zero.

Also dd is going to scale much better, as I suspect printf won't work real well with "%1073741824s" if trying to create a 1Gb "empty" file.

Files that are created containing the character zero are called dense files. Sparse files would be created like this:

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero of=sparsefile bs=1 count=0 seek=100

Hi.

If the length of file is non-zero, then like cfajohnson I would not call it empty.

I have seen dense refer to file formats that might be compressed: Telephone tapping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (search for dense).

The sparse file idea is different as noted by Scrutinizer: Sparse file - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Words make a difference, and confusion can result if we don't understand the same concept embodied by a specific word ... cheers, drl

Here the word dense has a different meaning and I think it refers to a file that is dense, i.e. already compressed.

The term "dense file" is normally used as an antonym to "sparse file". In sparse files not every value is really stored. When these are referenced, they are given a default value, for example zero. In dense files every value is actually stored.