11/3/71 /DEV/RFO (IV) NAME rf0 -- RF11--RS11 fixed--head disk file SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION This file refers to the entire RF disk. It may be either read or written, although writing is inherently very dangerous, since a file system resides there. The disk contains 1024 256--word blocks, numbered 0 to 1023. Like the other block--structured devices (tape, RK disk) this file is addressed in blocks, not bytes. This has two consequences: seek calls refer to block numbers, not byte numbers; and sequential reading or writing always advance the read or write pointer by at least one block. Thus successive reads of 10 characters from this file actually read the first 10 characters from successive blocks. FILES SEE ALSO /dev/tap0, /dev/rk0 DIAGNOSTICS BUGS The fact that this device is addressed in terms of blocks, not bytes, is extremely unfortunate. It is due entirely to the fact that read and write pointers (and consequently the arguments to seek and tell) are single--precision numbers. This really has to be changed but unfortunately the repercussions are serious. OWNER ken, dmr