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From: peter@sugar.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: pointer alignment when int != char *
Message-ID: <688@sugar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 11-Sep-87 06:28:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: sugar.688
Posted: Fri Sep 11 06:28:40 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Sep-87 07:44:56 EDT
References: <493@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <6061@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3812@spool.WISC.EDU> <4469@ncoast.UUCP>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 17

> We're not talking about UNIX standards, we're talking about C standards.
> Date and time are easily convertible under any OS; but how do you implement
> a byte-oriented lseek() under VMS?  VM/CMS on an IBM?  (Both use fixed 80-byte
> records for text files -- NOT byte streams! -- and other record formats for
> non-text files.)

You implement a non-byte-oriented lseek. Lseek is permitted to use a
magic cookie. Or you implement a byte-oriented one and return an error
code when you use it incorrectly. Lseek is permitted to fail on non-seekable
files. Even UNIX has these (pipes, terminals...)

The worst abomination I have seen along these lines as an IBM mainframe 'C'
library that copies text files into record-oriented files when you open them
so you can lseek on them. Then it copies them back on close.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter
--                 'U`  <-- Public domain wolf.