I meant fixed length in the mainframe sense of records addressable (directly and only) by record number.

Fixed length records on PC's are (for the most part) only variable length bits of a stream that all happen (even by design) to be the same length. There is nothing to stop you from positioning the pointer to mid record before reading or writing, and completely corrupting the record structure in the process.

What's the reason for you frowny? Assuming your fixed-length records are delimited with newlines, you can just as easily process them as you would variable length records with the added bonus of being able to index you way directly to a given record. Even if they are not delimited, setting $/ = \80; or whatever the fixed length is, allows you to read them just as easily.

I don't see the problem?

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller
If I understand your problem, I can solve it! Of course, the same can be said for you.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: File I/O by BrowserUk
in thread File I/O by ced4dad

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