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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!pollux!dalsqnt!rpp386!jfh
From: jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: VMS vs. UNIX file system
Summary: qio and bucket of bytes
Message-ID: <6846@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 20 Sep 88 00:19:20 GMT
References: <411@marob.MASA.COM> <3597@encore.UUCP> <3438@crash.cts.com> <68855@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum)
Organization: HASA, "S" Division
Lines: 16

In article <68855@sun.uucp> guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>Umm, as others have already pointed out, UNIX doesn't use '\n' as a record
>separator; it uses it as a *line* separator.  UNIX - like VMS - ultimately (at
>the kernel level) implements files as a sequence of bytes (RMS sits on top of
>QIOs that read virtual blocks of the file, *n'est ce pas?*).

vms has file attributes directly associated with the file.  qio does
read virtual blocks - but you can't easily convince rms to read a file
in some mode other than the mode the file was created with.  if you
have an isam file you want to read as a 80 character fixed length record
file, it's qio or nothing [ but grief ]
-- 
John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US)                   HASA, "S" Division

    "If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong."
                -- Norm Schryer