unix file system

[Stanley Friesen]

In article <4053 at alice.UUCP> ark at alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes:
>> Some of us at Digital think we have found a basic problem with the  UNIX
>> file  system  for FORTRAN.  The problem is that there is no place to put
>> various kinds of information about  the  contents  of  the  file.
>
>The place to put information about the contents of the file
>is in the file itself.
>
	Absolutely! In fact the obvious solution is to place a header
at the beginning of the file containing such information as record
length, and write the Fortran I/O library so that it understands this
header. Something similar has *already* been incorporated into UNIX,
namely the executable(a.out) file format, which contains a header
specifying type(the "magic number") and the size of each portion
of the executable image. All that need be done is devise a variant
of this system for fixed-length record files!
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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