[BUG] '?' sign instead of specific file size

[Flint]

A very fine bug was occasionally found on the Russian forum:
when one have a file with size of 4294967295 bytes (FFFFFFFF in hex!) TC shows a question mark ('?') instead of the size. Also I tried several other sizes - and size 4294967294 is also shown incorrectly (just empty field). See the screenshot here:
http://flint-inc.ru/Temp/tc/FileSizes.png (8 Kb)

Sizes of the files are 429496729n bytes where n.avi is the file name (e.g. 4294967293 for 3.avi).
Also as you can see in the footer, size of the selected files is calculated incorrectly.

Tested under TC 6.53, 6.54, WinXP SP2, NTFS.

PS: Luckily, I have enough free space on my disk to create all these huge files.

[Sheepdog]

Can you provide a tool to create a file with a particular filessize?

sheepdog

[Flint]

I used fsutil.exe tool:
fsutil file createnew <name> <size>

Added:
fsutil tool comes with WinXP distribution.

[Lefteous]

2Flint
It's a well known behavior:
http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=7466

Short translation: Both filesizes encode special states: Size unknown and not relevant. It's highly unlikely to encouter such filesizes.

[Hacker]

I can remember a topic about this behavior before, can't find it now, though. I guess it is among norfie's deleted posts. Anyways, IIRC Christian said that it is by design, though I don't remember the reason anymore.

Roman
[EDIT: Bah, I knew Lefteous participated in that topic, too, but I didn't remember any keywords to search... ]

[frenky]

2Lefteous
Can you pls translate?

[Sheepdog]

Confirmed.

Another interesting issue:
If you [Ctrl]+[L] on this file you get the correct filesize: 4.294.967.295 bytes
but
Actual space used
on source drive: 4.294.967.296
on target: 4.294.967.297

while
filesize: 4.294.967.294
Actual space used
on source drive: 4.294.967.296
on target: 4.294.967.296
and
filesize: 4.294.967.290
Actual space used
on source drive: 4.294.967.296
on target: 4.294.967.296

these values produces.

And the DirsizeCalc plugin of Lefteous calculates the size correctly.

sheepdog

[Flint]

Lefteous
Thank you for pointing me to the thread, I searched by English words only - that's why I didn't found any...

But Christian told that he planned to fix this bug (although he's afraid of possible side-effects). He posted it on June 3, 2005, so, maybe, in 7.0?..

[karlchen]

Considering the fact that filesizes of 4 GB and above are not too uncommon nowadays it is no longer acceptable that these numbers cannot be displayed properly by a filemanager
(Whatever reasons and restrictions 10 years ago may have led to this behaviour is of no relevance any more today. Storing year dates in two bytes variables was considered sufficient once upon a time, too, and we all had to learn that was not sufficient. The same applies to filesizes of 4GB and above. They do occur and have to be displayed properly.)

Karl

[Flint]

The problem has been fixed in TC7.0pb3.