[Info-vax] wrong file format

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <rshtj3$ksm$1 at dont-email.me>, Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl>
writes: 

> The problem is that in Unix and Windows land there is no difference 
> between the metadata of a file, and the actual contents of a file. The 
> metadata should define the file and the records in the file, that should 
> be completely separate from the actual data contents of the file.

The unix mantra is "everything is a stream of bytes".  Including the 
user, presumably.

> The DEC software engineers understood very well why it is a bad idea to 
> mix up contents of a file with the structure of a file, and that's why 
> they did not use stream files as standard RMS files in applications. 
> They are just there for compatibly with Unix, Windows etc.

Exactly.  There are so many things which DEC just go right.