It isn't the same though, because not all files are non-seekable streams of bytes. In fact, most are seekable and possibly sparse. What happens when you did a

It isn't the same though, because not all files are non-seekable streams of bytes. In fact, most are seekable and possibly sparse. What happens when you did a sparse file? And cp? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/sparse_file https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/sparse_file C.f. fallocate(1,2)