5.13.2 Where Implementations might Differ anyway In the section above, some areas where the standard allows implementations to differ are listed. In an ideal world, that ought to be the only traps that you should need to look out for, but unfortunately, the world is not ideal. There are several areas where the requirements set up by the standard is quite high, and where implementations are likely to differ from the standard. These areas are: · Repositioning at (for the current write position) or beyond the end-of-file may be allowed. On some systems, to prohibit that would require a lot of checking, so some systems will probably skip that check. At least for some operating systems, the act of repositioning after end-of-file is a useful feature. · Under Unix, it can be used for creating a dynamically sized random access file; do not bother about how much space is allocated for the file, just position to the correct “sloth” and write the data there. If the data file is sparse, holes might occur in the file; that is parts of the file which has not been written, and which is all zeros (and which are therefore not stored on disk. · Some implementations will use the same position for both the current read position and the current write position to overcome these implementations. Whenever you are doing a read, and the previous operation was a write (or vice versa), it is may prove useful to reposition the current read (or write) position. · There might be a maximum linesize for your REXX interpreter. At least the 50Kb limit on string length may apply. · Handling the situation where another program writes data to a file which is used by the REXX interpreter for reading.
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