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From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Record-access libraries (Was: Re: V
Message-ID: <225800074@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 88 14:23:00 GMT
References: 
Lines: 29
Nf-ID: #R::-30:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:225800074:000:1413
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Sep 24 09:23:00 1988


/* Written 12:32 pm  Sep 22, 1988 by eric@snark.UUCP in uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.lang.c */
/* ---------- "Record-access libraries (Was: Re: V" ---------- */
In article <207@cvbnet2.uucp>, aperez@cvbnet2.UUCP (Arturo Perez Ext.) writes:
> What I'm curious about is the fact that I've never heard of any record
> access libraries for Unix.  I know that I've written simpleminded record
> access applications.  I'm sure other people have as well.  Is there anyone
> actually selling record access libraries for the Unix community?  If not
> why isn't anyone doing it?

Shortest answer: because it's not worth doing.

<<<<<>>>>>>>

>Record-access libraries sound like a decent idea, but in practice they tend to
>introduce a lot of interface complexity (which makes your code ugly) and
>premature optimization (which actually hurts performance). VMS's RMS could
>stand as a perfect example of both these lossages.

/* End of text from uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.lang.c */

Well stated indeed. Except that for some unknown reason the VMS RMS is
very fast indeed. However, VMS has one feature that I can't find in Unix:
asynchronous IO, that is, start an IO operation and let processing
continue, and when the IO finishes it sets a flag or calls an
out-of-line routine. The only way I can see to do this is Unix
is with separate processes, which is a complicated loser.

Doug McDonald