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From: info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: writing a log file that's readable
Message-ID: <9180@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 19-Jul-85 15:35:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9180
Posted: Fri Jul 19 15:35:12 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 12:00:16 EDT
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: Provan@LLL-MFE.ARPA


Can someone tell me how to have a program create and write a file so it
can be read while it's being written.  I'd like to have the same
ability that we have with batch jobs and spawned processes and the
like, although I assume those are based on special features of PPFs
which aren't available to this program (a symbiont).

Just to avoid being told the obvious solution, the SHR options are only
legal in non-sequential files or sequential files with fixed 512 byte
records.  Log files don't have those characteristics.

Does anyone else think it's generally obnoxious not to be able to read
a file just because someone else is writing it?  I guess they're trying
to protect me from something, but I'm not sure what.  Maybe I'm just
spoiled by TOPS-10 that always allows you to read the latest version of
a file (although TOPS-10 doesn't put a file into a directory until it's
closed, so that makes the problem a little different).