From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9c86eb13dd395066 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: ohk@edeber.tfdt-o.nta.no (Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen FOU.TD/DELAB) Subject: Re: CRC in Ada? Date: 1997/03/06 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 223476358 References: <1997Mar2.220652@nova.wright.edu> <1997Mar5.083233.1@eisner> Organization: Telenor Online Public Access Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-03-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) writes: I still don't think it's a "mistake" to expect buffering to be done by standard packages, rather than by every user's program. I mean, you have to tell the thing that you're planning to read sequentially through the file, but beyond that, the application program shouldn't have to worry about it. (When I programmed on VAX/VMS, I was appalled at the complexity of the Record Management Services. I still don't know why all that complexity is necessary, as compared to the Unix notion that a file is a sequence of bytes. But I could be wrong -- I write compilers, mostly, which don't need "fancy" I/O facilities.) Nor do data base management systems. If you use something like the RMS, your DBMS is probably not going to be very portable, and it is not very likeley that the RMS idea of what properties and physical layout a record should have matches the DBMS's ideas. I could make similar complaints about the crazy idea of building so-called "reliable" network protocols without regard to the rest of the system (like TCP/IP), but I'll stop here. The basic problem is that designers of services like file systems and network protocols must assume soemthing about their clients. Often that assumption is wrong, in which case the value of the service is rather dubious. It is NOT easy to build complex mechanisms which must be useable in a variety of contexts. Note that Ada compilers don't typically use Text_IO to read the source code! ;-) - Bob