--- Walter Murray <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Although the file system on Unix does not manage records as such, > your program can still do so. In other words, if your program > defines a record length of 100 bytes, each READ you do will retrieve > the next 100 bytes of data from the file. The file system may not > regard that as a record, but you really don't need it to; you are > responsible for managing your own data. i hope everyone reads what walter wrote....twice! i remember when i was in college...and one of our assignments was to write a (c) program to write records to a file (on a unix system). i'm thinking...sure, no problem, this is simple. however, the rest of the guys in class were freaking because the concept of a 'record' was utterly foreign to them. once someone (probably me) said -- you're just writing stuff out in N-byte chunks, little lights came on and folks quit stressing. a couple of thoughts 1) this isn't all that different than managing data in a data segment (for those that remember that :-) 2) you better have a lot of confidence in whatever is producing your data (whether it's you (one of your programs) or someone else) because without a 'rigid' record concept, it's real easy to get garbage. (think rigorous field initialization, eh?) hth - d ===== Donna Garverick Sr. System Programmer dgarverick -at- longs -dot- com 925-210-6631 Longs Drug Stores Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. "Ulysses", A. Tennyson >>>MY opinions, not Longs Drug Stores'<<< __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *