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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <49DF8CAD.5618BE77 at spam.comcast.net>,
> 	David J Dachtera <djesys.no at spam.comcast.net> writes:
>> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> In article <49DD4688.6EF7C2 at spam.comcast.net>,
>>>         David J Dachtera <djesys.no at spam.comcast.net> writes:
>>>> Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>>>> Bob Koehler schrieb:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    UNIX is still a two-mode system which forks new processes every time
>>>>>>    it turns around, and has no concept of files beyond stream of bytes.
>>>>> And ? So what. Essentially it *is* a sack of bytes.
>>>>> Records grouped in blocks (as in MVS and VMS) are relics
>>>>> from the era of slow tape and disk drives which had to be accessed
>>>>> at a rather low level.
>>>> Well, no, not really. Every "row" from a table that is retrieved froma
>>>> database constitutes a "record". Every POST operation in HTTP returns a
>>>> "record", complex as it may be.
>>>>
>>>> Gotta look past the trees to see the forest.
>>> I did look past the trees (records) and saw the whole forest.  And it is
>>> composed entirely of bytes. 
>> ...and how are those bytes organized? (Yes, Virginia, there *IS* a
>> structure!)
>>
>> Try again.
>>
> 
> They are not organized.  An artificial structure is imposed at the
> application layer.  All computer data is composed of bytes. (well,
> bits if you go low enough)  Any "structure" is artificial and
> imposed after the fact.  There are no records in memory.  Just bytes.
> So then, why should one assume there is anything different anywhere
> else?  There are no records built into my disks.  A disk from one
> computer can be used on another.  I can take the disk from my VMS
> machine with all those "structured file types" put it in my unix
> machine and it works just fine.  The disk does not store things
> as anything but blocks containing bytes.  Any structure is artificial
> and at a very high level in the process.
> 
> I have never tried it, but I would imagine it is perfectly doable to
> take a VMS disk, hook it up to a unix box and read the data from it.
> 
> bill
> 

Of course you could read the data from it!  But Unix would probably not 
understand what space was in use and what was free.  You could find and 
read files only with great difficulty.  You would have to port a big 
chunk of RMS to read files and make sense of them.

There is a huge difference between reading raw data from a disk, which 
any O/S can do, and reading files.