🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <15609357@zl2tnm.gen.nz>, don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (Don Stokes) writes:
> 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*
                         ^
Perhaps you could tell the nice reader what else is in vol 6.

> 
> 		*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.
> 

But U*** still loses because it has no way of telling the application what
TYPE of file structure it is...

> 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.  
> 

Never a truer word spoken... The intertwining of the C language and Unix IO
is a *HUGE* mistake.

~Paul