Re: pg_dump and large files - is this a problem?

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> Your version will break more often because we are assuming we can
> determine the endian-ness of the OS, _and_ for quad off_t types,
> assuming we know that is stored the same too.  While we have ending for
> int's, I have no idea if quads are always stored the same.

There is precedent for problems of that ilk, too, cf PDP_ENDIAN: years
ago someone made double-word-integer software routines and did not
think twice about which word should appear first in storage, with the
consequence that the storage order was neither little-endian nor
big-endian.  (We have exactly the same issue with our CRC routines for
compilers without int64: the two-int32 struct is defined in a way that's
compatible with little-endian storage, and on a big-endian machine it'll
produce a funny storage order.)

Unless someone can point to a supported (or potentially interesting)
platform on which off_t is indeed not integral, I think the shift-based
code is our safest bet.  (The precedent of the off_t checking code in
configure makes me really doubt that there are any platforms with
non-integral off_t.)
        regards, tom lane