a file that is handled in a way that requires much less disk space than would otherwise be needed
a file were suficiently large blocks of zeros isn't allocated disk space
a file who's internally unused internal ranges are not allocated to any actual disk space
a file with one or more regions of unallocated data in it
a special file type that will only consume space on disk as data is added to the file
A large file that has been preallocated but is mostly empty, such as a database log file.
A file that is created with a length greater than the data it contains, leaving empty spaces for future addition of data.
In computer science, a sparse file is a type of computer file that attempts to use file system space more efficiently. When space has been allocated to a file but not actually filled with data it is not written to the file system. Instead information on these "empty" regions is stored until they are filled with data.