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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: variable length strings
Date: 26 Oct 2004 07:48:54 -0500
Organization: LJK Software
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In article <mailman.61.1098789536.10401.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org>, Marius Amado Alves <amado.alves@netcabo.pt> writes:

> This however perpetuates another problem: text files cannot be shared 
> between different OSes.

The problem of variable length record text files is beyond the reach
of any Ada standard.

The possibilities VMS must handle are:

	Out-of-band record termination (as codified in ISO-9660 6.10.4)
	CRLF record termination (compatible with Microsoft)
	CR record termination (compatible with MacOS)
	LF record termination (compatible with Unix)

I do not think any non-proprietary standard supports all of those (in
the sense of providing an out-of-band indicator regarding which is in
use).

Solutions which involve rewriting the data into another format are only
for people who have never seen a truly large file.  ISO-9660, for example
can use 32767 volumes to hold a single file, and even though the various
DVD formats are limited to less than about 10 GB, the ISO-9660 format
can also be used on magnetic disks.