Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lew Pitcher Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Rationale for aligning data on even bytes in a Unix shell file? Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 23:49:03 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 55 Message-ID: References: <20250428203634.00006e09@yahoo.com> <20250428112132.197@kylheku.com> <20250428222914.0000021c@yahoo.com> <20250429111750.00004055@yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Thu, 01 May 2025 01:49:04 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="285007131d4254c23f746c6d8f961391"; logging-data="926518"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX189o2+inRG8fvv6O8D2iPbYlqGHS+FEHxM=" User-Agent: Pan/0.139 (Sexual Chocolate; GIT bf56508 git://git.gnome.org/pan2) Cancel-Lock: sha1:y9VxpAwpFhQZKyZAF8VRiPYgBRA= Bytes: 3581 On Thu, 01 May 2025 00:15:12 +0200, Janis Papanagnou wrote: > On 30.04.2025 15:41, Scott Lurndal wrote: >> Janis Papanagnou writes: >>> On 30.04.2025 03:53, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: >>>> On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 11:17:50 +0300, Michael S wrote: >>>> >>>>> z/Os is alive and in good shape, but everybody knows that despite >>>>> the trademark it is not similar to Unix. >>>> >>>> Just goes to show the worthlessness of the “Unix” name nowadays. >>> >>> "UNIX" has a meaning that varied historically. But "Unix" is >>> commonly used as a name for the family of "UNIX-like" systems; >>> that's very useful since it allows to formulate commonalities >>> of this OS family.[*] >>> >>> [*] As we've seen in the discussion of Unix file systems with >>> its basic structure of being built by sequences of octets[**] >>> and having two distinguished characters '\0' and '/'. >>> >>> [**] BTW; does anyone know how e.g. the [historic] Borroughs >> >> s/Borroughs/Burroughs/ >> then >> s/Burroughs/Sperry/ > > Oh, sorry, I actually made even a more serious mistake beyond a typo; > > s/Borroughs/Honeywell 6000/ > > But the question was not so much about the concrete system label but > the principle question what happens if a system's character width is > defined as 9 bit, the underlying hardware (like hard disks) probably > 8 bit, A quick read through the Wikipedia article on the Honeywell 6000 and another read through the documentation on the (related) DDS190 disk storage unit (see https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1939073/Honeywell-6000-Series.html?page=8#manual) indicates that the hard disks used 6-bit characters. That would mean that, on disk, you could store a Honeywell 6000 36-bit word as 6 6bit characters (or 2 9bit program characters in 3 6bit storage characters). > and a Unix OS file-system in between. > > Janis > >> [...] -- Lew Pitcher "In Skills We Trust"