[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:
< 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.

Cards yes, but on most terminals you can keep typing without a newline
while it wraps back to column 1 (or stays at 80).

And on disk you could have up to 7294 bytes per record.
 
< 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.

-- glen