Xref: utzoo comp.os.vms:8754 comp.unix.wizards:11198
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!psuvax1!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: VMS vs. UNIX file system
Message-ID: <3997@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 18 Sep 88 05:47:05 GMT
References: <411@marob.MASA.COM> <3597@encore.UUCP> <3438@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 16

In article <3438@crash.cts.com> jeh@crash.CTS.COM (Jamie Hanrahan) writes:
>I much prefer VMS's variable-length-record text file format
>to Unix's byte-stream.  Why?  Because the Unix byte stream uses perfectly
>legitimate data as a record separator.

UNIX files have no records, so there is no record separator.

But if you consider lines of text to be records and the newline
character to be a record separator (the concept is in your mind, not in
the filesystem), then VMS has a similar problem:  The low-level I/O
routines use perfectly legitimate data for administrative information!
Only at the RMS level is the overhead data made out-of-band.  And even
under UNIX, it is perfectly possible for an ISAM library to maintain
out-of-band administrative data.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  !{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi