Re: Measuring (or calculating) how many bytes are actually written to disk when I repeatedly save a file

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

On Sunday, April 07, 2019 05:41:42 AM Curt wrote:
> On 2019-04-06, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> >> 2. A lot of my editing involves editing near (but not at) the end of
> >> a file.  I assume (I know) that the software that saves the file is
> >> smart enough not to rewrite the entire file but instead to preserve
> >> the beginning of the file and just rewrite the changed part of the
> >> file (or from there to the end of the file).
> > 
> > Not completely sure if "you assume" or "you know" it to be the case.
> 
> > Especially given that you then add:
> He assumes he knows, I guess.

I tried to address that in a different response today.  I do find it fascinating 
that, so often (it seems to me) people on this list speculate on what someone 
else means, or answers for them instead of either asking them or waiting a 
reasonable time for a response.  (I guess a reasonable time is in the mind of 
the beholder.)

And forgive me if I'm a little abrupt this morning, I'll use my headache as an 
excuse.

> It might be pertinent for us to know what "the software" is exactly. At
> any rate, why anyone would write "the software" rather the name of the
> application involved defies my imaginative faculty.
> 
> Maybe it's privileged information the OP must keep under wraps.

I thought "edit" would be pretty clear (implying a text editor / word 
processor), but, to get more specific, depending on the file I use kate, nedit, 
or kwrite, and I am starting to migrate toward using any scintilla based 
editor -- I need some software written (in scintilla terms, some lexer / 
folders to make that migration -- I've now found a student in Serbia who is 
helping me with that (because I could never grok C/C++ or the scintilla code 
base).  (But, by paying attention to what he is writing, I think I may 
overcome that problem.)

And thinking about it today, editing could refer to things like audio or video 
files (and maybe other things), but I'm not sure that would make a difference to 
my questions or the answers.
 
> >> Can anyone confirm that,

Well, with atsar or smartctl, I anticipate some experiments that might confirm 
that for me.