On 2018-10-13, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > However -- my point was that those formats were supported natively at > the OS level, not some language utility library working on top of the basic > streams. > > A more recent (my age shows) example would be the features in DEC VMS > Record Management Services. Again the format was handled at the system > service level by any language -- stream, fixed length with counts, ISAM...
Yep, and when writing C programs under VMS, you had to pay attention to which of the underlying file "formats" you were dealing with. Only the "stream" format worked the way that a Unix user expected. ISTR that "stream" wasn't commonly used by programs written in other languages (e.g. Fortran). I think "varible length record" was the one that I most often ran into. But, it's been a _long_ time since I worked with VMS (almost 30 years)... -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
