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From: edhall%rand-unix@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: MAX FILES PER PROCESS PROBLEM - (nf)
Message-ID: <14551@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Dec-83 02:13:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.14551
Posted: Mon Dec 19 02:13:00 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Dec-83 00:57:20 EST
Lines: 25

>                                                         ...  This may
> be familiar to you if you've ever sorted on a card sorting machine (most of
> the net is probably too young to have had that particular experience).

Well, sonny, it sure is nice to know that most people on the net are
younger than my ripe old age of 29.  (:-))  However, I seem to remember
the card-sorting machine I used having only 10 stacks, not 26.  A limit
of twenty open files is generous by those standards!  (And, yes, there
were techniques of doing alphabetic sorts on this card sorter.  This
required two passes per column, though.)

Here in the real world we constantly have to make compromises based on
physical constraints.  Perhaps the `real world' of computing is so
flexible that *any* constraint seems fair game for removal.  But I
hardly consider the 20- (or 32-) file limit to be holding back progress
in the same manner as, say, a 16-bit address.

Have no fear, however!  Note that the 4.2 features which use bit
strings (such as select()) use a *pointer* to integer, leaving open
the possibility of an arbitrary number of bits for such things, and
not a maximum of the magic `32'.

		-Ed Hall
		edhall@rand-unix        (ARPA)
		decvax!randvax!edhall   (UUCP)