[Info-vax] Re; Spiralog, RMS Journaling (was Re: FREESPADRIFT)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-06-27 19:40, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article <00B0B3EA.9F7943FA at SendSpamHere.ORG>,   VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
>>
>> OK... So we should all toss fixed, VFC, VAR, STM and STMCF formats and use
>> STMLF exclusively.
>>
>> Again, the filesize (in bytes) CAN be had but they'll not mean what you want
>> them to mean to your protocol transfer.  Again, I don't see that as any VMS
>> problem;  I see it as a protocol limitation imposed by all of the *ixers out
>> there that have, parochially, defined these protocols RFCs.
>
>    Hm.   Windows stores text lines with CRLF separators, so that's 2
>    bytes meta-data per line of text.

Well, with Windows it is not meta data, in that sense. It is actual file 
content.

>  VAR stores text with leaing
>    lengths in 16 bit words, so that's 2 bytes meta-data per line of
>    text.
>
>    Would seem to me that VAR isn't even a problem.  When you do the
>    conversion to the protocol's CRLF separators, you get the same total
>    bytes.

If it was only that simple... But of course, it is not... :-)
With VAR files, if your record length is odd, it will be padded to an 
even number before the next record starts, meaning you have one 
additional byte not accounted for.
If you then also select that records should not span blocks, you might 
actually get a lot of padding at the end of a block, which you normally 
do not see or notice.
But doing the actual size calculations based on what meta data RMS is 
storing is just not possible. :-(

	Johnny