[Info-vax] RMS internals?

[Howard S Shubs]

In article <0037589e$0$28455$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>,
 JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:

> If your client trasnfered in binary mode, you would have raw data with
> CR-LFs terminating records.  (or whatever line termination sequence
> windows uses). It would be easier to parse since there would be no RMS
> interpretation of the data.
> 
> Binary/image mode usually results in a file created on VMS with fixed
> length 512 byte records (aka: 1 record per block) and no record
> attributes. So when you read the data, you get the data uninterpreted by
> RMS.

Yes, that's why I asked them to get me a file transferred in binary 
mode.  I wanted to see what it'd look like to me.  Fixed length 512 byte 
"records" aside, I'm not sure I want to play the "what terminator are we 
looking for today" game.  Coming from Windows, that's a pretty easy 
game, I'll grant you, but I want to keep this as general as I can.

My code to deal with UNDEFINED is the simplest.  It just says, do we 
have enough data remaining in the buffer?  If yes, copy the next 33097 
bytes to the caller's buffer, and return.  If it were only that easy all 
the time. :-/  (otherwise, copy what remains to the user's buffer, 
$READ, then copy the remaining data we need for the user, and return, 
always allowing for EOF, of course)

-- 
Don't bother with piddly crap like "gun control".
Life is 100% fatal.  Ban it.