Re: view/edit large files

[Miles Bader]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
>> "floats" can exactly represent integers if the integer quantity fits
>> within the mantissa.  For an IEEE double, that's 52 bits, which is
>> enough for many uses
>
> Right, but is it enough in this case?  I don't know, it all depends on
> what kind of time resolution is needed.  Also, time values are
> frequently used in arithmetic operations that could lose a few low
> bits.

If it's an integer, and it fits, it's exact -- there is no loss of precision.

>> (for an inode number, I'm not sure -- obviously
>> it's enough for 32-bit inode numbers, but possibly not some 64-bit
>> numbers
>
> Windows NTFS uses 64-bit numbers for the ``file index'' we use as the
> replacement for inode.

For traditional style inode numbers, which are allocate sequentially
from zero, it doesn't matter; however, for abstract 64-bit quantities
for which no guarantees, it wouldn't work.

-Miles

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