21 Mar
2016
21 Mar
'16
6:06 p.m.
Tony Finch scripsit:
I was slightly startled by the coolness of the idea
when I found out that
nvi uses Berkeley DB as its storage layer; its recno access method
makes a text file look like a random-access array of strings.
Classical sequential files, however, were simply random-access files
such that seeking to line n was just a matter of seeking to byte
n * MAXCHARSLINE. The last time I actually used such a thing was
on an early Tandem system when I was implementing the Software Tools.
Editable source used a different format, so I set things up so that
the Tools could either read source format or sequential format and
then wrote sequential format.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
At the end of the Metatarsal Age, the dinosaurs abruptly vanished.
The theory that a single catastrophic event may have been responsible
has been strengthened by the recent discovery of a worldwide layer of
whipped cream marking the Creosote-Tutelary boundary. --Science Made Stupid