A memory map of a gigabyte/whatever, that uses a bunch of large addresses but typically only uses 1% of the available space. Saves someone the trouble of manag

A memory map of a gigabyte/whatever, that uses a bunch of large addresses but typically only uses 1% of the available space. Saves someone the trouble of managing the map or compressing it. It does feel like a weird decision from long time ago that we're stuck with. I thought it was some quirky Linux feature but it's been around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file