Re: [boost] Random Access to Files (RAF) - any interest ?

OT: hypothetical future flesystem may use these 128 bits to provide hierarchical structuring of the data, ala IPv6.

That is an interesting idea.

More realistic feature request would be support for sparse files.

The empty areas could be used for appending new data efficiently, normal operations on RAF should ignore then.

Support for sparse files is available in Win32 via DeviceIoControl(FSCTL_QUERY_ALLOCATED_RANGES).

I have vague feeling Linux has something like that too.

ZFS on Solaris 10 has an extension to the the Posix lseek() flags, SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE. It makes it easy to find the holes in your files. I may be wrong here but I don't think Linux supports this.