> /file/name; echo '### 001'; ( dd bs=4096 count=<size/4096>; dd bs=<size%4096> count=1 ) 2>/dev/null | ( cat > %s; cat > /dev/null ); echo '### 200' This command is for storing /file/name, which is exactly size bytes big. You probably think I went crazy. Well, I did not: that strange cat > /dev/null has purpose to discard any extra data which was not written to disk (due to for example out of space condition).Now perhaps there is a typo and 'cat' was intended at the beginning of the line. Then apparently the dd commands are to check for overflow perhaps caused by disk failure, but the 'cat > %s' has me at sea.Can anybody better at shell programming than me give a better explanation of just what's going on here?Lars H: I suspect that %s should be replaced by the name of the file to store, but whether this is something that should be substituted before sending the command (like the <size/4096> and <size%4096> most likely are) or whether it employs some sh magic I cannot say. The > /file/name at the beginning of the line looks very strange too, so perhaps they're supposed to work together.The dd commands are for reading some exact number of bytes from stdin, similar to
puts -nonewline [read stdin $size]
2005-11-08 VI The > filename at the beginning makes a zero size file. effectively truncating it to zero bytes if it already exists.The dd commands are just trying to be efficient, first do as many 4096-byte blocks as you can, then do the remainder in one block. The > /dev/null is what takes care of disk errors. As LH says, the "%s" is supposed to be the same as /file/name and the expressions involving size can be precomputed.Do let us know if you managed get something halfway done. I'd love to contribute, but can't really overcome inertia.SEH 20051113 -- See An SSH virtual filesystem.
escargo 9 Nov 2005 - Not to be confused with fish, the Friendly Interactive Shell [2].
