6 Apr
2009
6 Apr
'09
9:12 p.m.
VMS itself doesn't represent files internally
(i.e., on the
filesystem) as streams of bytes with CR or LF or a combination at the
end of a line. An RMS text file is a series of variable length
records that are converted to things like null terminated strings,
etc., by, IIRC, a combination of RMS and the run-time-library for your
application's language (VAXCRTL.EXE, etc.)
That's one of the RMS formats: sequential variable length records. RMS
also has fixed length record files (card decks, sort of, with selectable
card width). And it does support "stream" files, with your choice of
CRLF, LF, or CR newline.
Then it has more exotic stuff like indexed files (key/data pairs). All
this was done much earlier in OS/360, perhaps first though I don't know
that for a fact. The 360s were also odd ducks in that they had hardware
support for variable length blocks and key/value files right in the disk
drives. This complexity still exists, in "mainframe" storage area
networking devices.
paul