From: msxhans@yahoo.com   
      
   Marco van de Voort  wrote:   
      
   >On 2005-02-05, Bill Leary  wrote:   
   >> The limitations, especially the "open only once" are artificial and   
   >> intended to highlight a perceived feature of C's standard library.  In   
   >> Pascal, if I really needed to access the file both ways at the same time   
   >> (and I'd need to be convinced it was necessary), I'd either open it twice,   
   >> once each way, or open it as binary then whomp up my own line and   
   >> character read routines.  Which choice would depend on the higher   
   >> necessities of the program.   
   >   
   >Still, I always wondered what the benefit was of having separate assign   
   >and reset/rewrite procedures. A legacy thing I guess.   
      
   Must be. Something analog to the Job Control Language or whatever the designer   
   was accustomed to on the mainframe at that moment. Perhaps  separate the real   
   file name (assign) from the name in the program (reset/rewrite). Like the   
   program name(input, output) construction. Very common in the mainframe/mini   
   systems. Those were the days of card decks!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)