> “There I just saved you a lot of time and aggravation. What IBM calls ‘data sets’ virtually every other OS on the planet calls files and directories.”
I understand the author’s pain, but sometimes the “I’ll just google things based on my existing assumptions” approach fails.
Imagine trying to learn SQL like this. You google for “how to create file in SQL” and later you conclude: “For some crazy reason files are called rows in SQL!” — In other words, the basic assumptions just don’t map, and you’d be better off reading the manual.
Even files aren’t quite as ubiquitous as it seems. Apple iOS didn’t offer a user-visible file system until 2017. The Unix file APIs work in a sandbox, but they’re not recommended.
>> every other OS on the planet calls files and directories
I think it is a useful distinction, the one between a file and a data set. In one case the OS is kept unaware of the logical structure of a file, while the user does not need to know about its physical arrangement; in the other case, things are almost exactly the other way around.
I understand the author’s pain, but sometimes the “I’ll just google things based on my existing assumptions” approach fails.
Imagine trying to learn SQL like this. You google for “how to create file in SQL” and later you conclude: “For some crazy reason files are called rows in SQL!” — In other words, the basic assumptions just don’t map, and you’d be better off reading the manual.
Even files aren’t quite as ubiquitous as it seems. Apple iOS didn’t offer a user-visible file system until 2017. The Unix file APIs work in a sandbox, but they’re not recommended.