Re: More on RE/RS

[Charles Goldfarb]
> The standard (and the Handbook) recognize the possibility that
> records might not exist in some storage formats. In those cases, you
> can assign RE/RS out of existence. But when records actually exist,
> you *cannot* evade handling them by not assigning RE/RS and sweeping
> them under the rug (where "rug" = application or entity manager).

But when *do* "records actually exist"?  There is a perception evident
here, and one that I had always taken for granted, that the data
between carriage returns (a "line") was to be interpreted as a record.
But I can't find anything in 8879 to that effect!  IBM mainframes have
records; they are definitely records, and nothing else.  But in an
ASCII text file, from UNIX, DOS, or Macintosh, what constitutes a
record, normatively?  I think 8879 does not prescribe a particular
behavior in this regard.

In any case, the fiat of the ERB (per Eliot) seems to have rendered
this discussion moot for the purposes of the Working Group.  I'm still
interested in the subject, but we probably shouldn't clutter the list.
Maybe an RE BOF at SGML '96? (-:

-Chris
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Received on Thursday, 26 September 1996 15:58:44 UTC