Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!oddjob!uwvax!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: a couple of random questions
Message-ID: <2736@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 25 Apr 88 22:11:25 GMT
References: <530@vsi.UUCP> <10426@steinmetz.ge.com> <541@vsi.UUCP> <7706@brl-smoke.ARPA> <2636@bsu-cs.UUCP> <7745@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Distribution: comp
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 20

In article <7745@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
writes:
[about my observation that ftell() on VMS gives different values for
the same file position reached in different ways]

>Although I believe this to be correct, I don't see what relevance it has
>for the preceding discussion.  Certainly we never promised that the
>cookies returned by ftell() were uniquely determined by the byte-stream
>model position.

My thinking was affected by my VMS C manual, which says that "With
record files, ftell returns the starting position of the current
record, not the current byte offset."  What I observed seems to
illustrate that VMS C's idea of "the current record" depends on how you
reached end-of-file.

I certainly don't accuse the ANSI C committee's actions of causing VMS
C to do what it does.  Exactly the opposite, in fact.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi