[Fwd: Re: Switch SPARC GNU coreutils+bash from 32 to 64bit [PSARC/2008/351]

[James Carlson]

Alan Coopersmith writes:
> Richard L. Hamilton wrote:
> >> I can think of three main categories of capacity limits on 32-bit that
> >> might
> >> be higher on 64-bit:
> >> * file size max of 2GB
> >> * register size and usage
> >> * available address space, and therefore amount that can be mmap()'d
> >> at once
> >> (Also, IIRC stdio is supposed to handle > 256 file pointers on 64-bit.)
> 
> Yes, the 256 FILE stdio limit is lifted in 64-bit.   The other main

It's also lifted if you call enable_extended_FILE_stdio(3C), use the
extendedFILE.so.1 preload, or 'F' is used as the last character in the
fopen(3C) mode string.

> advantage I'm aware of is 64-bit time_t, so you can work with timestamps
> outside the 1970-2038 range, which there is no way to do in 32-bit (the
> large file compilation flags only raised the sizes to 64-bit, not the
> timestamps).

Yes; that's the biggie.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
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