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Fwd: Re: ___ files

To: s-news@wubios.wustl.edu
Subject: Fwd: Re: ___ files
From: Naomi Altman <naomi@stat.psu.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 13:46:14 -0400

From: Bill Dunlap <bill@insightful.com>
X-Authentication-Warning: octopus.insightful.com: bill owned process doing -bs
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 13:39:44 -0700 (PDT)
X-Sender: bill@octopus
To: Naomi Altman <naomi@stat.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [S] ___ files

On Tue, 6 Aug 2002, Naomi Altman wrote:

> I have some very large files on my .Data directory (Unix) that start
> "___"  e.g. "___6oe7".  Can I safely get rid of these?

Yes.  The files in .Data of the form 3 underscores followed by
some letters and digits are ok to get rid of.  (Those letters
and digits should be the hexidecimal representation of the
the process id, perhaps with some trailing stuff, so only 0-9 and
a-f should be there.)

  Files of the form 2 underscores followed by digits are not ok to
  get rid of!

The first sort of file is used by Splus to write a dataset into.
If it is successful writing the entire dataset (there was enough
space, it wasn't interrupted, there were no permission problems)
then it renames it to the proper name of the object.  E.g.
        x <- 1:10
causes Splus to put 1:10 into the file
        ___45ac0
and if that file was completely written without any probems it renames it
        x

The most common reason for failure to completely write the file is that
the disk filled up so these orphaned files tend to be large.  They ought
to be removed when that happens but Splus doesn't remove them now.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Dunlap                                      22461 Mt Vernon-Big Lake Rd
Insightful Corporation                           Mount Vernon, WA 98274
bill@insightful.com                              360-428-8146
 "Formerly known as MathSoft, Insightful Corporation provides analytical
 solutions leveraging S-PLUS, StatServer and consulting services."

 "All statements in this message represent the opinions of the author and do
 not necessarily reflect Insightful Corporation policy or position."

Naomi S. Altman                                814-865-3791 (voice)
Associate Professor
Dept. of Statistics                              814-863-7114 (fax)
Penn State University                         814-865-1348 (Statistics)
University Park, PA 16802-2111



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