Xref: utzoo comp.os.vms:8822 comp.unix.wizards:11270 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!munnari!mimir!hugin!augean!sirius!jeremy From: jeremy@chook.ua.oz (Jeremy Webber) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: VMS vs. UNIX file system Message-ID:Date: 21 Sep 88 01:03:53 GMT References: <411@marob.MASA.COM> <178@arnold.UUCP> <3442@crash.cts.com> <13608@mimsy.UUCP> Sender: news@sirius.ua.oz Organization: Computer Science, Adelaide University, Australia Lines: 26 In-reply-to: chris@mimsy.UUCP's message of 18 Sep 88 15:04:51 GMT Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.44 of Fri May 13 1988 on chook (berkeley-unix) In all this discussion I have not seen mention of the fact that you can open a VMS file for block i/o and then treat it as a stream of blocks. This can be useful for just moving data around. It can also be dangerous, but no more so than treating a file as a stream of bytes. One thing that I think DEC stuffed up badly though is that they did not define a standard for text files. Instead, you have variable-length-carriage-control, Fortran carriage control, List carriage control, stream-LF, stream-CR and probably half a dozen others that I have not thought about. This makes writing text file manipulation programs, such as text editors, a real pain. It also makes manipulation of text by programs written in different languages hazardous. I believe that DEC should modify the run time libraries of all languages to convert internal text to and from a standard text form when reading and writing files. I can see the performance advantages of letting the file system "know" about RMS. Particularly with regard to record locking and other commercial uses. In short, there are advantages and disadantages in the VMS as against the UNIX method of treating files, and you'll probably choose the one best for your application. -Jeremy Webber (jeremy@chook.ua.oz.au) Computer Science, Adelaide University, Australia "One of these days I'll get around to writing a .signature file"