Imagine an airport where flights depart throughout the day: When a plane leaves, the gate becomes free. The airport doesn't remove the gate itself. Future flights can use the same space. Constantly rebuilding airport infrastructure would create delays. Hive manages deleted data in a comparable way. HDFS favors stability and throughput over instant file resizing. Compaction processes handle long-term storage optimization. That's why a delete operation may not produce any visible reduction in file size right away.
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