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From: jlg@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: RMS {SHORT}
Message-ID: <23705@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 25-Mar-85 14:45:52 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.23705
Posted: Mon Mar 25 14:45:52 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Mar-85 06:26:08 EST
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Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
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> 	3) this is not from the above
> 	article, but it is clear that users that don't need indexed files are
> 	paying for them involuntarily (and unnecessarily) since they are in the
> 	lowest level file handler.
> 
> 	J. Giles
> 
> Sure they pay for it.  It costs a couple of pages of physical memory.  Not zero,
> but not a lot at current memory prices.

On my desk I have a copy of the source code to the Fortran support library
and to RMS (fiche thanks - or it wouldn't fit on my desk).  Having traced
through some of the labyrinthine logic of these bodies of code I can tell
you that the price for features in RMS is HIGH.  By the second or third
dozenth check of various flags, you don't really care whether the I/O
gets done or not.  One benchmark (unformatted I/O through RMS and the
same data through QIO calls) showed a factor of SIX difference in speed.
Don't claim the cost is minor until you've compared the results!

J. Giles