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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HDFS-3219?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13248628#comment-13248628
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Tsz Wo (Nicholas), SZE commented on HDFS-3219:
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Oops, you are right that I should say replica's visible length instead of
block's visible in my previous comment.
> Disambiguate "visible length" in the code and docs
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: HDFS-3219
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HDFS-3219
> Project: Hadoop HDFS
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Reporter: Eli Collins
> Priority: Minor
>
> HDFS-2288 there are two definition of visible length, or rather we're using
> the same name for two things:
> 1. The HDFS-265 design doc which defines it as property of the replica:
> {quote}
> visible length is the "number of bytes that have been acknowledged by the
> downstream DataNodes". It is replica (not block) specific, meaning it can be
> different for different replicas at a given time. In the document it is
> called BA (bytes acknowledged), compared to BR (bytes received).
> {quote}
> 2. The definition in HDFS-814 and DFSClient#getVisibleLength which defines it
> as a property of a file:
> {quote}
> The visible length is the length that *all* datanodes in the pipeline contain
> at least such amount of data. Therefore, these data are visible to the
> readers.
> {quote}
> According to this definition the visible length of a file is the floor of all
> visible lengths of all the replicas of the last block. It's a static property
> set on open, eg is not updated when a writer calls hflush. Also
> DFSInputStream#readBlockLength returns the 1st visible length of a replica it
> finds, so it seems possible (though unlikely) in a failure scenario it could
> return a length that was longer than what all replicas had.
> This has caused confusion in a number of other jiras. We should update the
> design doc, java doc, perhaps rename DFSClient#getVisibleLength etc to
> disambiguate this.
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