[Rd] file.info() on file larger than 2GB

[Prof Brian Ripley]

This is a purely OS issue: your OS has not been set up so the fopen and
stat calls handle > 2Gb files.  There is one R issue: the size will
overflow in file.info.

For example, under Solaris 64-bit applications can handle such files 
whereas 32-bit ones need calls to stat64, fopen64 etc.

It seems a very exotic need, but if someone wants to find out how to use 
the OS-specific ways to extend stat etc and supply patches, please do so.

We don't put OS-specific limitations on help pages.

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Roger D. Peng wrote:

> I've got a file that's approximately 2.2GB and it seems to be foiling 
> file.info().  When I run `stat' from the shell I get
> 
> zooey:> stat data.csv
>    File: `data.csv'
>    Size: 2271197563      Blocks: 4440280    IO Block: 4096   regular file
> Device: 342h/834d       Inode: 9994308     Links: 1
> Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: (  500/   rpeng)   Gid: (  500/   rpeng)
> Access: 2004-08-31 09:50:04.000000000 -0400
> Modify: 2004-08-26 19:09:42.000000000 -0400
> Change: 2004-08-31 09:53:29.000000000 -0400

Take a look at the source code for stat, in coreutils.

> But, file.info() in R-devel gives me:
> 
>  > file.info("data.csv")
>           size isdir mode mtime ctime atime uid gid uname grname
> data.csv   NA    NA <NA>  <NA>  <NA>  <NA>  NA  NA  <NA>   <NA>
> 
> I assume this has something to do with the underlying call to `stat' 
> in `do_fileinfo'.
> 
> This alone is not much of a problem but I also can't seem to be able 
> to open a file connection to the same file.  For example,
> 
>  > con <- file("data.csv")
>  > open(con, "r")
> Error in open.connection(con, "r") : unable to open connection
> In addition: Warning message:
> cannot open file `data.csv'
> 
> Also, interestingly,
> 
>  > file.exists("data.csv")
> [1] FALSE
> 
> I take it all these things are related.
> 
> Is it possible to fix this within R?  Or should there be a note in the 
> help pages?
> 
>  > version
>           _
> platform i686-pc-linux-gnu
> arch     i686
> os       linux-gnu
> system   i686, linux-gnu
> status   Under development (unstable)
> major    2
> minor    0.0
> year     2004
> month    08
> day      31
> language R
> 
> -roger
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
> 

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595