Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sunybcs!boulder!hao!noao!arizona!amethyst!spock!chris From: chris@spock (Chris Ott) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: OS features Message-ID: <561@amethyst.ma.arizona.edu> Date: 15 Dec 87 04:50:33 GMT Sender: news@amethyst.ma.arizona.edu Reply-To: chris@spock.ame.arizona.edu (Chris Ott) chris%spock@amethyst.UUCP Distribution: na Organization: Computer-Aided Engineering Lab (CAEL), University of Arizona Lines: 24 Mark Woodruff writes: > o Contiguous file allocation on large devices. The additional overhead > of discontiguous file allocation is unwarranted on modern hardware. One of the features of AOS/VS (Data General) that I like is its variable element size. Files are made up of elements of a given number of blocks. For example, if a file's element size is 10 blocks, the file will grow in chunks of 10 blocks at a time. This is great when you're setting up a file that you know is going to be large, and you want to quickly access the data: just set the element size to 30000 or something. Likewise, you don't want to take up 30000 blocks for a file that's only going to be a few lines long, so you can set the element size to 1 block, and only 1 block will be allocated at a time. I haven't seen this feature on any other operating system. Has anyone else? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Ott Computer-Aided Engr. Lab Beware of low-flying butterflies. University of Arizona Internet: chris@spock.ame.arizona.edu UUCP: {allegra,cmcl2,hao!noao}!arizona!amethyst!spock!chris -------------------------------------------------------------------------------