[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-12-30, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> So I took:
> * what everybody knows about RMS
> * relative file and direct access fixed length file examples
>    I recently posted
> * the index-sequential file examples I have used numerous times before
> * some file read and file creation test code I did a few years ago
> and baked it into:
>
> https://www.vajhoej.dk/arne/articles/rms.html
>

Some feedback:

About your VFC comments: what does Fortran carriage control use on VMS ?
You say there is no use for VFC, but then you go on to say Fortran uses
VFC for carriage control.

You may wish to make explicit what the maximum record size is with RMS.

Do you want to discuss the history of ISAM files with their different
prolog versions ?

You may wish to make it clear that RMS is a part of VMS in that it is
within VMS itself and not just some user-mode library linked in to each
user program.

You may wish to make the byte ordering explicit by giving offsets to
each field. IOW, make it clear that the control data is at the start
of each record and that fields are in little-endian and not big-endian
format. This matters because different operating systems have both
different documentation and endian conventions.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.