Line Terminators in Text Files [

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo]

Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com> writes:

> RMS finally got a true stream mode interface circa VAX/VMS version 5,
> three releases after the DEC C compiler was first released.

I ported C-TeX to VAX/VMS 5, using the straight stream mode for I/O, and
was annoyed by how slow it was.  I ended up writing my own glue to have
it write binary RMS files in 512 byte blocks instead, and the speed
increase was very gratifying.  We're talking several times faster.

I remember how this made our VAX 780 able to process TeX files at just
about the same speed as my 12MhZ 286 PC, when I was alone on the system
at night.  Then I discovered it did it just as fast during the day, with
about a hundred other users on the machine.  :)

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay