[Info-vax] Example of random access by record number on an RMS fixed record size, relative organization file?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/20/2023 10:41 PM, Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:33:10 PM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 9/20/2023 12:18 AM, Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote:
>>> Yes indeed traditionally folks only had half a clue about RMS and vaguely know 512 was a special value and very popular.
>>>
>>> With that they proceeded to maximize their storage losses.
> 
>> I could have used recl=508.
> 
> Yes you could, and so could have hundreds of commercial programmers but the point is they didn't!
> They all picked 512 and proceeded to add 'filler' bytes to their record definitions 'just in case' just like you did.
> 
> :-)

There are a few magic numbers 255, 512, 8192, 32767 etc. that probably
are more likely to show up than others.

If space efficiency is not important, then it does not matter.

If space efficiency is important and there is a problem, then
the problem should be investigated - and figuring it out should
not be that difficult.

And as long as they do not call VMS engineering and complain
over the "in-efficiency" then all should be fine.

But for some reason I get the impression that some people
did call VMS engineering and complained over it ...

:-)

Arne

PS: Maybe the manual should make a recommendation of record
     size of multipla of 512 minus 4 (which if I understand
     your description correct is what minimize unusable space).