Which brings up an issue which I would like to see implemented at some
     'convenient time'.  For most sites/data centers, we have people
     supporting and using multiple platforms.  For this reason, it would
     make life easier for me and most people I know if all disc space
     reporting was done consistently in bytes rather than sectors.  I don't
     think a week goes by when someone doesn't ask me how many bytes are in
     a sector because they relate to bytes (or megabytes).  This would also
     help with at least the perception that the HP3K fits nicely into a
     multi-platform world.

     Jeff, with the implementation of system level variables, could we set
     a flag to report in bytes vrs sectors?

     Regards,
     Carl Sitherwood
     HP Atlanta


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: 1 Tbyte files and LISTF
Author:  Non-HP-sieler2 ([log in to unmask]) at HP-USA,mimegw1
Date:    3/24/98 1:40 PM


John writes:
> In our programs the "K" or other alpha character within the field would
> cause an error.  Thus, existing code would error out, preventing a

In some programs, however, it would be silently ignored.

Further, a trailing "K" (in the units column) is easy to overlook.
(Also, is "K" 1000 or 1024?)

I.e, it's hard to quickly determine which is the biggest file:

 FILENAME  CODE  ------------LOGICAL RECORD-----------   ----SPACE----
                   SIZE  TYP        EOF      LIMIT R/B   SECTORS #X MX

 NEWPSDSC          128@  FB      12274K     18643K   1   18643K  1  1
 NEWPSDSM         3934B  VA        1084     234344   1 12928292  1  *
 REALBIG          3934B  VA        1084     234344   1  515899K  1  *

(numbers made up)


That's why I suggest:

 FILENAME  CODE  ------------LOGICAL RECORD-----------   ----SPACE----
                   SIZE  TYP        EOF      LIMIT R/B   SECTORS #X MX

 NEWPSDSC          128@  FB      12274K     18643K   1 MB: 4549  1  1
 NEWPSDSM         3934B  VA        1084     234344   1 12928292  1  *
 REALBIG          3934B  VA        1084     234344   1 GB:  123  1  *

By putting the "MB/GB/TB" in the left most colum (where the 10-millions
digit goes), we break existing code (just as well as "********").

Yet, the value is clearly readable by users.  (Indeed, you can forsee
an option that would say "hey, never use 8 digits for sectors... if the
file is larger than 99999 sectors, switch to MBs...that
would cause NEWPSDSM above to display as "MB: 3156", which is a lot
more intuitive than "12928292".

SS