Structured Data
Functions from stdio.h tend to be char-oriented
File-descriptor-based system calls deal with byte sequences
- bytes can be interpreted as
char, int, struct, etc
- so, many kinds of objects can be
read() or write() **
Allows programmers to manipulate files of data items, e.g.
- list of
double values read from sensor device
- collection of
Student records
** you cannot save/restore pointer values using write()/read()
- because they refer to memory addresses within a process instance
- and a different process instance might already have used those addresses
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