NEC-LIST: disk space for file

> From Louis Botha:
> Although virtual memory will use less disk space with NEC2 than the four
> files, it can (is?) be a lot slower...

On VAX/VMS the virtual memory solution was faster than the NEC-2
sequential-file solution, while the NEC-4 direct-access-file solution
was faster than VMS (~20% ?). Maybe VMS is optimized better than Win95
for this purpose. However one user was unable to get VMS to actually
free the disk space when a file was rewound and written over, so he
ended up with more than four files and ran out of disk space.

I always try to avoid out-of-core solutions by using symmetry, reducing
the model or finding a computer with more memory. On multi-user systems
there is often more RAM than I have personal disk space.

Jerry Burke
LLNL
Received on Thu Oct 24 1996 - 08:31:39 EDT