
How to Corrupt an SQLite Database File - jeffreyrogers
https://sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html
======
yuchi
I believe that SQLite is a continous source for awe in terms of overall
quality of software. Their documentation is spot on, extremely clear and has a
very low barrier for entry.

Applauds to them and the fantastic job they have been doing in the last
decades.

~~~
peatmoss
Yeah, I have an incomplete, not-written-down all star list of Free/Open Source
software that exhibit the following attributes:

\- Level of quality that is so high that a rational commercial entity would
have long ago decided that marginal gains in quality were uneconomic.

\- Fills a niche that needs filling.

\- Has an extended history of continual incremental improvement, most likely
but not always having lived long enough to see the original creator pass the
baton.

\- Remains intelligible and consistent over time. If I’d been frozen a decade
or two ago could I wake up today and feel familiar with the software?

SQLite is definitely on my all star list.

~~~
Simon_says
What else is on your list?

~~~
peatmoss
See this is the problem with lists; someone always asks what else is on the
list.

A sampling (probably leaving out #1):

\- The whole damned OpenBSD project including OpenSSH. I mean, wow, if ever
there were an unsung hero...

\- VLC came up the other day, and I had to conclude that it’s been around
sufficiently long (I thought I remembered late 90s, but was actually early
aughts).

\- Emacs and Vi/Vim (modulo some allowance for sometimes questionable quality,
however I’ve used and depended on both)

\- Postgres (since we’re talking about databases)

\- XFCE Even though I only use bits and pieces of it today with XMonad, XFCE
is the only stable, complete desktop environment for free Unixes if you take
the long view. KDE and Gnome are unrecognizable as compared to their original
versions. XFCE started as something of a spiritual successor to CDE built on
less byzantine tech, and is still as functional and unpretentious as it was
back in the day.

\- Heaps of GNU CLI tools. We may not be living in the house Stallman built,
but he and his project sure get credit for the remodel. Can you live without
GNU grep? Me neither.

\- Probably dozens others that I’m totally dependent on, that are as natural
as oxygen to me. Bash? Zsh? I might live without one or the other, but
certainly not both.

~~~
mr_overalls
I'd add LLVM and TeX to this list.

------
joshaidan
> There are many fraudulent USB sticks in circulation that report to have a
> high capacity (ex: 8GB) but are really only capable of storing a much
> smaller amount (ex: 1GB)... Internet searches such as "fake capacity usb"
> will turn up lots of disturbing information about this problem.

This caught my attention. Never heard of this problem before, but doesn't at
all surprise me.

~~~
teekert
See also this story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2418837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2418837)

------
angrygoat
This article links this interesting fault finding report from Facebook, on
file-descriptor reuse:

[https://code.facebook.com/posts/313033472212144/debugging-
fi...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/313033472212144/debugging-file-
corruption-on-ios/)

------
LeonM
Previous discussion (2013):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6502229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6502229)

