Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] large-file support?

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday, July 23, 2003, at 10:03 PM, Ben Greear wrote:

> How about making -r -
> read from standard-input.

That can work, as long as the standard input isn't a pipe, because the 
Wiretap code currently has to be able to seek backward on the file from 
which it's reading (it does that when trying to figure out what type of 
file it's reading) and, in Ethereal, seek forward as well (it has to be 
able to read the data for arbitrary frames, in arbitrary order, from 
the file, because the user could click on frames in random order).

If you're piping to Ethereal or Tethereal, however, that's not going to 
work.

> Then, one could cat large files into ethereal like that.

As long as catting large files into Ethereal doesn't mean piping them 
to Ethereal - unfortunately, that's probably what it *does* mean....\

> Fair enough, I was not sure that seeks would be needed, but if they
> are, then it becomes more difficult to play with large files.

They most definitely are.  See above.