[Info-vax] CRTL and RMS vs SSIO

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 10/7/2021 3:54 AM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 5:12:58 PM UTC+13, Dave Froble
> wrote:
>> Frankly, (and yes, I'm biased), I find records reasonable, and a
>> stream of bytes baffling and confusing. Guess it's what one is used
>> to.
> 
> Trouble is, there are many binary file formats that do not map easily
> to a simple sequence of records (of whatever delimitation). Consider
> the IFF family of file formats, for example: these are built out of
> chunks, and certain chunk types can contain other chunks.
> 
> For another example, consider file formats like TIFF and TTF, where
> there is a directory that identifies the location and size of the
> various major pieces. Oh, and PDF comes under this as well.

The whole record things is mostly for text files and RMS based
database style usage.

Even on VMS then true binary files are usually FIX 512 (or in rare
cases UDF) with the structure handled entirely by the application.

Attempts to do otherwise often end up with 32K problems.

> And then there are text-based format families, like XML, JSON, YAML,
> TOML ...

Different. Both on *nix and VMS that is a separate structure
on top of the basic file format.

Arne