VMS vs. UNIX file system

[Miles O'Neal]

In article <68855 at sun.uucp>, guy at gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
> 	3) Many more UNIX facilities use text files, rather than record files,
> 	   as their underlying file format; while one reason for this may be
> 	   the absence of a "record file" library, another reason is that you
> 	   can use the standard UNIX text file tools to manipulate those files.

If you even have your data files as text files, debugging
becomes much easier. For instance, would you rather debug

98764389437034gh307ytfhr398f39

or

12/22/88 01:30 10790 100 100 382 -1

?
These are not real data, but examples of what data files I've dealt
with looked like. The processing to do all this is cheap nowdays,
so why not use text files if there is no OVERWHELMING reason not to?

Another thing this buys you is that, in my experience, its easier
to change file formats if you use text files. It requires a little
plannning, but in general is a lot less work than doing the same
thing with any other type of data.

Strangely enough, you can do similar things with VMS, OS/32, or
even CP/M...