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gh-93180: Update documentation of os.copy_file_range #93182

Merged
merged 10 commits into from
Jun 8, 2022
20 changes: 17 additions & 3 deletions Doc/library/os.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -798,18 +798,32 @@ as internal buffering of data.
Copy *count* bytes from file descriptor *src*, starting from offset
*offset_src*, to file descriptor *dst*, starting from offset *offset_dst*.
If *offset_src* is None, then *src* is read from the current position;
respectively for *offset_dst*. The files pointed by *src* and *dst*
respectively for *offset_dst*.

In Linux kernel older than 5.3, the files pointed by *src* and *dst*
must reside in the same filesystem, otherwise an :exc:`OSError` is
raised with :attr:`~OSError.errno` set to :data:`errno.EXDEV`.

This copy is done without the additional cost of transferring data
from the kernel to user space and then back into the kernel. Additionally,
some filesystems could implement extra optimizations. The copy is done as if
both files are opened as binary.
some filesystems could implement extra optimizations, such as the use of
reflinks (i.e., two or more inodes that share pointers to the same
copy-on-write disk blocks; supported file systems include btrfs and XFS)
and server-side copy (in the case of NFS).

The function copies bytes between two file descriptors. Text options, like
the encoding and the line ending, are ignored.

The return value is the amount of bytes copied. This could be less than the
amount requested.

.. note::

On Linux, :func:`os.copy_file_range` should not be used for copying a
range of a pseudo file from a special filesystem like procfs and sysfs.
It will always copy no bytes and return 0 as if the file was empty
because of a known Linux kernel issue.

.. availability:: Linux kernel >= 4.5 or glibc >= 2.27.

.. versionadded:: 3.8
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