Re: [TUHS] File-as-record

Not sure I quite get this "file as record" thing. On TOPS-10, you create a file, edit a file, you don't have to allocate space for it before you use it. Sure, it's made up of "blocks" - and writing to the file requires you to do it in blocks. But allocating those blocks was done on as the fly as you wrote to it. Also, the first thing I did was to make my own routines that would allow the program to read/write in random-size chunks, blocking as it needs to. Is the distrinction that the operating system (libraries) allowed you to read/write random size chunks? If so, the underlying structure of a UNIX filesystem still required block I/O. It was just hidden from the programmer. But for peak performance, you still needed to do things in big enough chunks (blocks). If I had known that random-size chunk read/writes were a "thing" I would have added it to the TOPS-10 monitor sources and submitted it back to DEC :) AAK PS: First TOPS-10 monitor was 1964