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: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: CRC in Ada? Date: 1997/03/06 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 223528450 References: <1997Mar2.220652@nova.wright.edu> <1997Mar5.083233.1@eisner> <1997Mar5.131846.1@eisner> Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-03-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bob Duff said <<(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.)>> Well this is an old discussion, the trouble in Unix is that there are no standardized file formats for simple things like indexed sequential files, and indeed, until recently, Unices have paid little attention to I/O efficiency. If you spend 90% of your time running Syncsort on mainframes, it is quite important to be able to describe the layout of your file data precisely, including its positioning on external devices (just to take one example of appalling complexity). Yes, compiler writers don't need much in the way of I/O support, that's true, but I don't think you can extend this experience very far. In practice VMS is very successful in a segment of the market where Unix has been quite unsuccessful, and the RMS facilities are one important component in this success.