File handling in programming languages
Marc A. Gobin · ACM SIGPLAN Notices · 1980
Many programming languages allow the use of files. In Fortran, ALGOL60 and a few other programming languages file handling is not developed. In COBOL, PL/1, RPG, and partially in ALGOL68 a more or less complete set of instructions is provided for file handling. In the reference manuals for these languages the different elements of the file handling aspects are generally very confusing, because implementation restrictions do not allow a smooth orthogonal design of all these aspects. The aim of this article is to give a clear definition of all these aspects.A first paragraph states the three aspects considered. These are explained and developed in the following paragraphs. In a fifth part a summary is given of the desired operations on files, followed by a short description of an actual implementation. Some conclusions are drawn in a last paragraph.