[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[JF Mezei]

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> Well, the C gets() function, I believe still part of the standard,
> has no way to know the length of the buffer.  


Put yourself back into the 1960s context. It was pretty hard to provide
records longer than 80 bytes when imput methods were: PUNCHED CARDS and
80 character wide terminals.

Back then, having 81 byte buffers pretty much ensures you wouldn't have
buffer overflows.

And consider the VMS environment which, like MVS, likes structured
files. This is quite different from modern environments, especially
those handling web forms with variable length, multiline text entry
fields where you can enter 80k of text, not just 80 characters.