> I am no expert on how the mac handles writing file buffers, but it in
> other file systems the I/O routines write the data to disk in set
> sized 'chunks'. These chunks are stored before writing in file buffer
> areas in RAM. If entourage is not zeroing the buffer before it partly
> fills it with the data it needs to write it is quite possible that
> the whole contents of the buffer are written to the signatures file,
> including the extraneous information at the end, which could be
> almost any data at all that has passed through that section of the
> RAM.
Most low level drivers receive a buffer of data *and* a size.
For the sake of efficiency, most low level drivers stop writing the buffer
as soon as they which that size.
So it's usually the data that was on disk rather than the data that was in
memory that ends up stored for all posterity (or until the file next
changes).
Having said that, allow me to both defend and attack the Entourage scheme.
Yes, it would be expensive to ensure that the disk buffers were zero'd.
Those who have requested this (and believe that it's a big deal) should hunt
down one of the many utilities which enforce that behavior on a system wide
basis. It's a systemic problem, not an application problem.
On the other hand, Entourage should clear it's in-memory data buffer when
it's initially created. And that wouldn't be all that expensive an
operation since it would only happen *once*. Per user. So far as I can
tell, ever.
It's bad juju to create a memory buffer of size, let's say, 12650 bytes, and
then make the random contents of that memory space persistent.
mikel
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