Re: Need clarification on unformatted IO

>The character code used on the IBM 704 is BCDIC, and characters
>are called BCD characters.

Binary Coded Decimal, a.k.a., BCD, is just that. Decimal that is binary encoded. At that
time there were TRUE decimal machines, as well as true binary and those that used binary coded
decimal. These days there are no true decimal machines (to speak of) and binary coded decimal
is the closest we get to decimal.

BCDIC which stands for BCD Interchange Code (or at least it used to) was an extension to BCD
allowing other characters than just the decimal digits to be encoded in binary in a manner
that was a consistent extension of BCD. Note the shift in thinking, from decimal numbers
to decimal digits, to characters for decimal digits, which are then generalized. The only
relation between BCDIC and BCD is that the characters for '0' through '9' in BCDIC have
the same binary encoding as the decimal digits 0 .. 9 had in BCD. But BCD is a numeric
representation, whereas BCDIC is a character encoding.

As for "binary" for file structures that are not messed with by the RTL, I think the
"cooked" and "uncooked" terminology should have become more widespread. "Stream" is
certainly better than "binary" but still not very descriptive to my mind.
.

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