Hacker News Reader

Linux and fallocate() allows precisely this - we use this to "log locally" for applications, and a "tail this asap and publish to kafka then delete locally" helper.

See ( https://gist.github.com/minaguib/1cbe29922b06d50755a2f580b8c... ) for some test notes I took a couple of years ago.

fallocate() is not supported on network file systems, is it?

Curiously enough. PalmOS's file streams supported this very feature: delete as i read. As you read bytes from the start of the file, they'd be deleted. You were allowed to have a concurrent writer appending to the end.

As you read bytes from the start of the file, they'd be deleted. You were allowed to have a concurrent writer appending to the end.

Also known as a named pipe.

Kind of, a pipe has a limit of 16 pages which is usually 64kb.

But with no limit on buffer size. Pipes have a limit after which writer blocks. Also pipes aren't persistent across reboots. These are.

Journaling filesystems do that internally.