Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site decwrl.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!lsuc!pesnta!amdcad!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-mrvax!ddb 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