[Info-vax] VSI roadmap

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-08-23 19:09, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2023-08-23, David Jones <osuvman50 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wednesday, August 23, 2023 at 8:28:06?AM UTC-4, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> That the record is a series of opaque bytes, instead of structured
>>> fields with the knowledge about the fields built into RMS itself.
>>> Simon.
>>
>> To support any number of Unix applications reading of files, the C runtime
>> includes fgets() to return what is logically a record. So what?
> 
> 1) Nobody is working with RMS ISAM files by using fgets().

True. Because that would really just get you an opaque stream of bytes.

> 2) Have you ever seriously worked with RMS ISAM files in production use ?
> I have, and they are a bloody great big pain in the backside to manage
> and make record changes to, even minor changes.

I would disagree. There are even tools that make this easy. At least 
under RSX, and I would be very surprised to learn that VMS have anything 
less.

> Having ISAM files where the records are a series of structured fields
> instead of something that looks like a digital version of a punched card
> would be something that would have been a hell of a lot easier to maintain.

You do know that they can be of variable length, right?

"Punched cards"... I get the feeling you have never worked with punched 
cards...

   Johnny