[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Bob Koehler]

In article <YuWdnWNbWqUwBkfUnZ2dnUVZ_sHinZ2d at giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
> 
> Nothing stops your Unix program from using "records".  They can be fixed 
>   or variable length, unblocked or blocked, but they are *your* 
> responsibility.

   Exactly!  I don't want to roll my own.  I don't want some "record"
   that none of the OS utilities understands.  I don't want to have
   to invent access routines just so I can rewrite a variable length 
   record.

   On VMS, I can have my records and use them, too!  TYPE, for example,
   will display any kind of record, without the meta-data, on my
   terminal.  Yes, it best be printable characters in the data, but I
   can see those printable characters without worrying about whether the
   record is stream-cr, stream-lf, stream-crlf, variable, fixed, or part
   of a keyed indexed file.

   I don't have to hope that my text editor is following the same line 
   separation convention as yours.  I don't have to tell the print
   spooler which way to parse the file.  

   And the OS will tell me what meta-data and organisation a file uses
   if I ask, instead of hoping the source code is available, or reverse
   engineering and hoping I got it right.

   Not on bit of which prevents me from using byte stream files when
   they are the right tool for the job.