Docstrings considered too complicated

[Gregory Ewing]

Richard Brodie wrote:

> It goes back to ancient PDP operating systems, so may well
> predate Unix, depending which exact OS was the first to use it.

Yes, I think it was used in RT-11, which also had
block-oriented disk files.

There were two kinds of devices in RT-11, character
and block, and the APIs for dealing with them were
quite different. They hadn't fully got their heads
around the concept of "device independent I/O" in
those days, although they were trying.

-- 
Greg