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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Seeking for papers about tagged types vs access to subprograms
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 15:13:32 -0400
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2013-05-13T15:13:32-04:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> writes:

> Because you are used to poor operating systems like Unix and Windows,
> where files are simply a raw bag of bytes.

"sequence", not "bag".

> In the old times, when people still knew how to write OSes (VMS...), you
> had various kinds of files that were managed at OS level. A sequential
> file was the logical mapping for a tape, and a direct file for a disc.

I haven't used VMS in years, but I recall Record Management Services
being a nightmare!  Far more complexity than could possibly be worth
the functionality provided.

Anyway, I don't see VMS (etc) being a good excuse for the design
flaws of Text_IO, because Text_IO doesn't match VMS particularly
well.

Text_IO ought to provide simple streams-of-characters abstractions,
and what it looks like on the disk, or what it looks like to the
OS should be hidden at that level.

- Bob