Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: What constitutes a good OS?
Message-ID: <5429@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 22 Jan 91 19:25:42 GMT
References: <42014@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <5394@auspex.auspex.com> <42350@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 81

>My main thrust is not that I want keys on text files, but that
>I want keyed files, and if such files are implemented, it should be
>possible to use them for text files.

Unfortunately, the example you chose to bolster your case for that
appears to be predicated on the widespread use of hardcopy terminals;
choose another example, 'cuz when the CP-V/CP6 fans talk about how
wonderful that scheme is because you don't invalidate the line numbers
on your listings, lots of the rest of us - and not just the UNIX users,
either - tend to ask "what's a line-numbered listing, and why is it so
important not to invalidate them?" :-)

>>Lots of us don't really have the hardcopy problem as you
>>present it....
>
>Lots of you never worked on a hardcopy-only terminal.

Lots of us used to work on hardcopy-only terminals, but are now damn
glad that we have display terminals, or, even better, large displays
with multiple windows.  Maybe in the days of hardcopy terminals
persistent line numbers were a win (it's been a *long* time since I was
stuck on a hardcopy terminal), but they would affect my life very little
now....  (I.e., they seem like a solution to something that's not a
problem for a lot of us.)

>Being able to go back three of four pages and look to see what you did
>is a great help. I could edit faster on 300 baud decwriters that I
>often can with modern editors.

I've not been unlucky to find a modern editor that bad....

>Sure there are always workarounds. However, I've seen EMACS users say
>how terrible vi is because it doesn't have this and that and thother.

In a lot of cases, that occurs, I suspect, because the EMACS users have
gotten used to doing someting in one particular way that requires the
stuff EMACS has that "vi" doesn't, and, *for them*, it'd be horrible not
to have an editor that let you do things in that way.  "vi" users have
often gotten used to doing something in a different way, that uses what
"vi" has, and I suspect that in a lot of cases neither way is "better"
in some objective sense, or the way in which it's "better" is outweighed
by the effort it'd take for a person to change their way of editing.

>I'm saying UNIX doesn't have this and that and thother and you're
>saying "well, there is this great workaround called blah, and besides
>I've never needed it."  I suspect that you *have* needed keyed record
>files and have reimplemented them every time you need them.

I suspect you haven't figured out what I was saying.  I'm not saying
*keyed files* aren't useful - I know that they are, for some purposes -
I'm saying that having text files as keyed files with persistent line
numbers as the keys would buy me precisely *nothing*.

>Termcap (or is it terminfo?) uses file names inside
>directories as keys for one line of information.

It's "terminfo".

>Actually, there are many programs that maintain text files as
>keyed files (via DBM), and the passwd file is often one of them. 
>If it is such a rare problem, why have we seemed to have fixed it?

We haven't "fixed" the "problem" to which I was referring; I wasn't
referring to the lack of keyed files, I was referring to the lack of
text files implemented as indexed files with persistent line numbers as
the keys.  There are problems for which keyed files provide a winning
solution; however, the *particular* problem of not invalidating your
line-numbered listings is one that I simply don't have, and one that I
suspect a lot of users of UNIX, VMS, DOS, OS/2, etc., etc., etc. don't
have, either, because hardcopy terminals aren't as common as they used
to be.

>I contend that it is because we have finally gotten to where we
>have systems large enough that simple bytestream text files are
>not good enough.

There are some files that aren't best represented solely as bytestream
text files; however, making the source files with which I work, or
netnews postings, or mail messages, etc. into indexed files with
persistent line numbers as the keys would, at least for me, be a
complete waste of effort.