In article <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask]
says...
>
>Hi,
>
>JAISHANKAR.G.J writes:
>>     We require help in mapping these intrinsics to UNIX.
>>
>>     HPFOPEN
>
>Gather up all the file system intrinsics and ask yourself: what am I trying
>to accomplish?
>
>A variety of people have written, or tried to write, FOPEN/HPFOPEN
>emulators.  But, what do you do when an FOPEN says "new disk file,
>with 2 userlabels, fixed record ASCII, ldev=3, CIR"?  That's four separate
>non-UNIX concepts!  Some users have said "implement userlabels as a separate
>file (with a name like <original file name>.ul), others have simply
>made them be the first n * 256 bytes of the file.
>
Even worse, what about when you want to open it "TEMP"? :)

Trying to provide MPE-like file handling routines on top of UNIX's internal
file system is like laying carpet directly on a dirt floor. By the time you go
to all the trouble of working around all of UNIX's brain-deadness (can you tell
I don't think UNIX is a Really Fine OS?) you could have written your entire
application back on MPE...and you haven't even *started* your app on UNIX yet!
Others on the list have, in times past, given some pretty good technical
examples of how MPE's approach to a file is so radically different than UNIX's.

HP has been accused of trying to dump MPE and sell UNIX to everyone....if
that's true, wouldn't it behoove them to actually make the MPE folks more
acceptable to changing by making MPE-type intrinsics available on HP-UX? Seems
to me if it could be done, HP marketing would have already given it a part
number, and we would only have to wait until HP-UX 10.40...uh, i mean
11.0....no, actually 11.10...um, would you believe 11.38173102 with the
following patches... to get it. Since HP hasn't done it, I think that's tacit
admission that maybe it's just not

UNIX has some really cool concepts and tools in it ... but a robust
sophisticated file system isn't one of them. You are in a for a short honeymoon
if you are expecting MPE-like services and behavior from it.

--
Mark Landin
T. D. Williamson, Inc.
UNIX Sys. Admin