q on fseek() & ftell() + tga files

In determining the true file size of a .tga file is the

fseek(fptr,0,SEEK_END);
file_size = ftell(fptr);

combination reliable ? The reason Im asking is because the value of file_size is in agreement with doing a

wc -c mytga.tga

however when I get the value of the extension area offset, it turns out to be much larger than the actual file size.

Thoughts and comments are much appreciated

James

I don't know what tga is, but see this old post of mine: determine the size of a file??? Post: 45748

sparse files are also called files with 'holes' in them. It is an attempt to save physical disk usage. It causes what you seem to see in your file.