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Groups > comp.lang.c++ > #5919

Re: Life is a stream?

Date 2011-05-31 20:43 +0100
From Andy Champ <no.way@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups comp.lang.c++
Subject Re: Life is a stream?
References <is1n3n$397$1@dont-email.me>
Message-ID <9MqdnXCIw-R92XjQnZ2dnUVZ7vadnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk> (permalink)

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On 31/05/2011 04:25, MikeP wrote:
> Programmers are enamoured with streams of bytes. Is that abstraction
> (i.e., generality) too rigidly modeled? I say, all IO (I/O?) is not
> alike, so why model it as if it is. What say you (y'all)?
>
> Keywords and key phrases (why is "keyword" a compound word and "key
> phrase" two words?): stream of bytes, record IO, formatted IO, ASCII
> unit/record/group separator, compromise, designed for all cases but good
> for none (nothing),... other.
>
>

Having read a few comments and rummaged in the old memory...

Some mainframe systems have record based file systems, where the OS is 
responsible for mapping the records onto the disc sectors.  There's no 
stream of bytes involved - a read will give you a record (which 
admittedly is usually made of bytes!) direct from a sector, and there is 
no byte-wide stream involved at all.  This of course has advantages if 
your data is wider than bytes, and the system bus is too - there's never 
a need to perform the byte alignment.

Andy

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Thread

Life is a stream? "MikeP" <mp011011@some.org> - 2011-05-30 22:25 -0500
  Re: Life is a stream? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-05-30 23:55 -0700
  Re: Life is a stream? Michael Doubez <michael.doubez@free.fr> - 2011-05-31 02:50 -0700
    Re: Life is a stream? "MikeP" <mp011011@some.org> - 2011-06-01 03:19 -0500
    Re: Life is a stream? "MikeP" <mp011011@some.org> - 2011-06-06 12:51 -0500
  Re: Life is a stream? Adam Skutt <askutt@gmail.com> - 2011-05-31 09:29 -0700
    Re: Life is a stream? "MikeP" <mp011011@some.org> - 2011-06-06 12:54 -0500
  Re: Life is a stream? Andy Champ <no.way@nospam.invalid> - 2011-05-31 20:43 +0100
    Re: Life is a stream? "MikeP" <mp011011@some.org> - 2011-06-01 03:22 -0500
      Re: Life is a stream? Andy Champ <no.way@nospam.invalid> - 2011-06-01 21:53 +0100
        Re: Life is a stream? "MikeP" <mp011011@some.org> - 2011-06-06 12:56 -0500

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