🚀 go-pugleaf

mdchaney@fractal.ucs.indiana.edu (M Darrin Chaney) writes:
> Actually, I've seen alot of people here call RMS "the file system."  For those
> of you who still think that RMS is the file system, I'll clue you in: RMS
> is not the file system.

Perhaps you'd like to explain why the back of the RMS manual looks like:

		V M S
		_________________
		
		*Volume 6B*

		*File System*

		Record Management
		Services (RMS)

Seriously, RMS is all-pervasive in VMS.  Sure, you can do QIOs to the 
XQP yourself, and RMS even provides an interface to make this a little
easier.  But 99.999% of the time, there is no reason to do so.  This is
what differentiates the VMS approach from the Unix universe.  Files on
VMS can (almost) always be read and written using RMS, often this means
that you can use tools intended for sequential files on indexed or 
relative files.  Compare the Unix approach, where if you use anything 
other than a sequential file, other utilities can't do anything useful
with it.  It's a standardisation issue more than anything else -- provide
a standard, easy way to do something and it will be used.  If you don't
you get a plethora of non-standard wheel re-inventions.  Providing an
ISAM package with the *FORTRAN* compiler (of all things) as one poster
commented on, just doesn't cut it in this regard.

> For stream-lf files, just buffer those blocks, and keep track of where the
> lf is.  It's not difficult, and you can easily get around the 65534 limit
> that RMS places on files.  Have fun...

This is what VAX C does.  It still succeeds in being dreadfully slow,
although it wouldn't take much effort by someone who knew something about
file handling to write a VAXCRTL that does block I/O and goes like a
scalded cat.  VAXCRTL is completely braindamaged in nearly every respect,
and seriously needs to be thrown away and started again.  

--
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM (DS555)                        don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (home)
Network Manager, Computing Services Centre            don@vuw.ac.nz (work)
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand              +64-4-495-5052