HP3000-L Archives

March 1998, Week 4

HP3000-L@RAVEN.UTC.EDU

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Subject:
From:
Stan Sieler <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Stan Sieler <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:40:51 -0800
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text/plain
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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".

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