VMS vs. UNIX file system

[Barry Shein]

If I can be permitted to summarize this discussion:

VMS's RMS can be useful in many situations and amounts to an added
application library bundled in with VMS which Unix folks would have to
go out and purchase separately (I've seen similar libraries for Unix
advertised in trade mags, they do exist.) Presumably one can add a
similarly useful access methods library to Unix, the biggest question
being the desirability of true asynchronous I/O (it's possible that,
from a pure performance standpoint, Unix wouldn't benefit that much
from this due to its buffer cache although some would still like it.)

VMS's biggest drawback, in regards RMS, is that there wasn't much more
discipline on the part of the applications designers to use
(preferably) one access method for most applications so utilities
could work together more smoothly. Having one utility produce a text
file which cannot be read in and manipulated by another seems to
violate "the law of least astonishment" in a major way. Simply
handling all the permutations is not as reliable as agreeing on one
format except where carefully justified. This is particularly true
when changing between programming languages (at least one reader
claims this.)

I think it's safe to say this was a constructive discussion.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||