Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxg.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Record-access libraries (Was: Re: V Message-ID: <225800074@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 24 Sep 88 14:23:00 GMT References: Lines: 29 Nf-ID: #R::-30:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:225800074:000:1413 Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald Sep 24 09:23:00 1988 /* Written 12:32 pm Sep 22, 1988 by eric@snark.UUCP in uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.lang.c */ /* ---------- "Record-access libraries (Was: Re: V" ---------- */ In article <207@cvbnet2.uucp>, aperez@cvbnet2.UUCP (Arturo Perez Ext.) writes: > What I'm curious about is the fact that I've never heard of any record > access libraries for Unix. I know that I've written simpleminded record > access applications. I'm sure other people have as well. Is there anyone > actually selling record access libraries for the Unix community? If not > why isn't anyone doing it? Shortest answer: because it's not worth doing. <<<<<>>>>>>> >Record-access libraries sound like a decent idea, but in practice they tend to >introduce a lot of interface complexity (which makes your code ugly) and >premature optimization (which actually hurts performance). VMS's RMS could >stand as a perfect example of both these lossages. /* End of text from uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.lang.c */ Well stated indeed. Except that for some unknown reason the VMS RMS is very fast indeed. However, VMS has one feature that I can't find in Unix: asynchronous IO, that is, start an IO operation and let processing continue, and when the IO finishes it sets a flag or calls an out-of-line routine. The only way I can see to do this is Unix is with separate processes, which is a complicated loser. Doug McDonald