Excellent. Though presumably it will be a slightly different length than whatever is torrented (which will be taken care of by the recheck-data option).
Why would a byte for byte copy be a "slightly different length"?
How does it know the length of the torrented file? (Note that it is "identical", not a copy) Though from what jgarzick says in the post above there is some kind of checkpointing that it either knows or gets fed into it?
It doesn't need to know the length of the file. The script doesn't make a dat file of your entire blockchain just through the last checkpoint. Currently the last checkpoint is block 193,000. If you run that script on any node it will produce the same file. Exactly the same file.
Now currently the script has 193,000 hardcoded but I could see future version either getting the checkpoint from the client or making an API call to get the block #. The script could be included with the client or even better it could be built into the client so you click an [export blockchain > torrent] button and it generates the proper file based on the current checkpoint.
Lots of interesting options.
