Cygwin api to punch a hole into a file?

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, Corinna Vinschen via Cygwin!

> I don't know how Windows stores short files,

By Windows I Think you did mean NTFS.
Then yes, file data for certain short values is stored directly in $MFT.
This is not specifically file contents, and even if a file content is just 1
byte, not necessarily it will be stored in $MFT. It all depends on the entire
size of file metadata. If it does not exceed some-under-1K in total, then file
data may be stored in $MFT as well.

> maybe they are part of the metadata up to a point or some such.  However, as
> soon as you raise the size over a given point, the *allocation size* will be
> rounded up to 64K and from that point on, it will be in 64K chunks.  Also
> sparsifying and desparsifying of blocks only works in 64K chunks.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Monday, December 4, 2023 18:56:37

Sorry for my terrible english...