Hi, Niels.

NP>  On 13 Jan 97  10:14:10 Bob Lawrence typed to Niels Petersen ....

NP>  >> How do they read from a file in a block?

NP>  >  NP> A file read (at the lowest level) places one sector (512 bytes)
NP>  >  NP> into a particular place in memory allocated for that purpose.

NP>  >   This is what Paul said, but it doesn't work in practice.

NP>  What I wrote is _exactly_ what happens at the machine level regardless
NP>  of what programming language you are using.

I don't think so. The hardware, the BIOS, and DOS all need to be told
how many bytes you want to read, where from, and where to put them. I
don't *think* (but may be wrong) that DOS necessarily buffers the I/O
so that it always reads an exact number of sectors. The C RTL may.

Regards, fIM.

 * * Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...
@EOT:

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