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

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <KbednRfOOfbZKn3UnZ2dnUVZ_g6dnZ2d at giganews.com>,
	"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
> 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.

I didn't mean reding the raw bits.  I meant interpreting the data.  All of
which could be done at the application level.  Given a description of the
format of the data, there is nothing to prevent reading bytes and extracting
usable data.

bill
 

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>