On (26 Jul 97) Cameron Clark wrote to Frank Swarbrick...
 FS> Hmm, I don't know about that.  COBOL uses indexed files and they
 FS> seem to work fine on my DOS machine.   Probably more effort for
 FS> the compiler, but that's what compilers are for, eh?
 CC>     I dunno how it works unless it truely goes to the lowest execution
 CC>     level and bypasses the FAT and allocates clusters on its own.
Pardon my asking in a less than completely polite way, but what in the
world makes you think bypassing the FAT would be involved in this in any
way?
DOS supports random access files quite nicely.  I'm not at all sure what
you'd accomplish by allocating clusters on your own - any way you go at
it, you'd have to mark them in the FAT as being allocated.  Other than
attempting to keep related data contiguous, the exact method of
allocating clusters has little or nothing to do with anything.
    Later,
    Jerry.
... The Universe is a figment of its own imagination.
--- PPoint 1.90
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