Zeugswetter Andreas ADI SD wrote:
> POSIX_FADV_WILLNEED definitely sounds very interesting, but:
>
> I think this interface was intended to hint larger areas (megabytes).
> But the "wishful" thinking was not to hint seq scans, but to advise
> single 8k pages.
Surely POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL is the one intended to hint seq scans,
and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM to hint random access. No?
ISTM, _WILLNEED seems just right for small random-access blocks.
Anyway, for those who want to see what they do in Linux,
http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/lxr/source/mm/fadvise.c
Pretty scary that Bruce said it could make older linuxes
dump core - there isn't a lot of code there.