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From: ddb@mrvax.DEC (DAVID DYER-BENNET MRO1-2/L14 DTN 231-4076)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: RMS useful?
Message-ID: <552@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Feb-85 16:03:06 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.552
Posted: Tue Feb 12 16:03:06 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 20:19:15 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 19

While I'm not  fan of VMS RMS, the fact that it provides  reasonably
consistent and compatible file structures is a big win;  Since all
indexed files on the system are RMS files, any program g
can read any file.  Contrast this to the mess of unique file
structures "optimized" for particular applications, and completely
unreadable by anybody else.

I'm not totally convinced that this is enough to justify the problems
that RMS often causes.  But wouldn't it be nice to have some standard
subroutines to implement some standard more-complex file organizations?
Wouldn't it be nice to read your dbaseII indexed file into a C program?
Or to type your indexed file (assuming only textual data in it) and
see it in order by prin
primary key?

Yes, you can do a special-case tool for each of these, but what a crock!

		-- David Dyer-Bennet
		-- ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-mrvax!ddb