Record-access libraries (Was: Re: V

[mcdonald at uxe.cso.uiuc.edu]

/* Written 12:32 pm  Sep 22, 1988 by eric at snark.UUCP in uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.lang.c */
/* ---------- "Record-access libraries (Was: Re: V" ---------- */
In article <207 at cvbnet2.uucp>, aperez at cvbnet2.UUCP (Arturo Perez Ext.) writes:
> What I'm curious about is the fact that I've never heard of any record
> access libraries for Unix.  I know that I've written simpleminded record
> access applications.  I'm sure other people have as well.  Is there anyone
> actually selling record access libraries for the Unix community?  If not
> why isn't anyone doing it?

Shortest answer: because it's not worth doing.

<<<<<<long section deleted, read the original>>>>>>>>

>Record-access libraries sound like a decent idea, but in practice they tend to
>introduce a lot of interface complexity (which makes your code ugly) and
>premature optimization (which actually hurts performance). VMS's RMS could
>stand as a perfect example of both these lossages.

/* End of text from uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.lang.c */

Well stated indeed. Except that for some unknown reason the VMS RMS is
very fast indeed. However, VMS has one feature that I can't find in Unix:
asynchronous IO, that is, start an IO operation and let processing
continue, and when the IO finishes it sets a flag or calls an
out-of-line routine. The only way I can see to do this is Unix
is with separate processes, which is a complicated loser.

Doug McDonald