Simulate concatenated file using hard link?

Question

I have multiple parts of a single file which I want a 3rd party c++/c# plugin to read as a single file. Basically, when the plugin file reader gets to the end of one file-part, I want it to continue to the next one. (For anyone interested, the plugin is Aforge.Net FFMpeg, and I am trying to import VOB files) It looks like quite a task to reprogram the plugin. An alternative solution is to copy the file parts to a concatenated file, but this is slow because I am dealing with many GBs of data. Is it possible to use a file system hard link to point to multiple files? Or is there some other way to 'fake' a concatenated file? Using command line FFMpeg I can use 'type' to live stream a concatenate file in, but I can't figure out how to achieve this in c# with this plugin. I am on Windows 7. JavaScript questions and answers, JavaScript questions pdf, JavaScript question bank, JavaScript questions and answers pdf, mcq on JavaScript pdf, JavaScript questions and solutions, JavaScript mcq Test , Interview JavaScript questions, JavaScript Questions for Interview, JavaScript MCQ (Multiple Choice Questions)

Answer 1

A hard link can only reference one I-node, so a hard link won't help. A FIFO, or named pipe, however, will. In a UNIX shell, you can do: $ mkfifo catenated $ cat a b c >catenated & A program that reads from the file "catenated" will now get all three files (a, b and c) concatenated together. Once the data from all three files have been read, the "cat" program will terminate. Microsoft Windows also has such features (see named pipe). Note that a pipe is not seekable. If the program reading the concatenated data tries to seek, it will fail. If the concatenation needs to be seekable, something more complicated (virtual filesystem? FUSE?) needs to be used.