

block                 Technical Information                 block




A block is  a mass of data that is  read at one time.  Blocks are
different  lengths under  different  operating systems;  COHERENT
defines a block as being BSIZE bytes long.

Information is read in blocks from block-special devices, such as
the  hard disk  or floppy  disks.  This is  done to  increase the
speed  with  which  data are  read  from  these devices;  reading
characters one at a  time, such as is done with character-special
devices such as terminals or modems, would be too slow.

***** See Also *****

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COHERENT Lexicon                                           Page 1


