Chapter 430 The Big One is Coming (Today there are only two chapters, see the 'Writer's Note' at the end of the chapter for details)
To be honest, this thing is a new thing, and now everyone's focus is still on how to use computers to complete specific functions.

As for people like Gao Zhendong, it seemed like he was doing nothing but making the screen light up so that people could operate the computer, but he had no specific goal, which made everyone a little confused for a moment.

But after all, all those present were professionals, and they didn’t feel the significance of what Gao Zhendong said for a while, but at least they soon realized the benefits of this thing to professionals.

For the current cyclic duty program, file management is actually a very troublesome thing.

Even the cyclic duty program itself is not a fuel-efficient lamp.

Whenever a program is completed, if it is run independently and not included in the software menu of the cyclic duty program, it is easier to deal with. It can be directly stored in a certain starting position of the storage device. After the computer is started, it will automatically start executing the program from that place and it will be called naturally.

But if for the sake of convenience, you want to put it in the software menu of the current cyclic duty program to facilitate calling and program switching, then trouble will arise.

First put the compiled program into the memory, then write down its starting position in the memory, and then configure the name and starting position of the software into the configuration file of the loop duty program so that it can be called.

If this is not the most troublesome thing, then this other thing is super troublesome.

——File management.

In the loop watcher, although there is a file structure, there is no file system. This means that in theory, each file generated or modified by a program is private to itself and cannot be accessed by other software.

Of course, there are solutions. For example, one or more areas can be designated on the memory, and all programs agree that when they need to access a file for a certain purpose, they access this area and read and write in a specific format.

Except for this designated area, do not touch other places, as that is the territory of other software, and may even be the main body of other software.

In this way, the problem of shared access to files in multiple softwares has been barely solved.

This can also be considered a relatively primitive file system, or even not a system, but only a file operation method.

But this method is extremely troublesome.

The management of these files is basically not done automatically by computers, but by people, and what they manage are extremely detailed issues such as the specific storage location, which is very troublesome.

Although some methods can be used to achieve small convenient functions such as automatically loading the access address according to the configuration, it still cannot solve the core problem.

However, now, with Chief Engineer Gao, everything seems to have been solved!
Oh, heaven and earth, finally we don’t have to calculate addresses anymore!

On behalf of all the programmers, Director Li asked Gao Zhendong in an excited tone: "Chief Engineer Gao, don't worry about other things for now. I just want to ask one question. Can this thing automatically manage files?"

Gao Zhendong smiled and said, "Yes! In this system, a file is just a binary data stream. For the commonly used file formats that have been preset, you only need to determine the file name and specify the specific operation. As for how the file is distributed, stored, read, written, modified, erased, and the storage space is recycled on the storage, it is all the responsibility of the operating system."

Chief Engineer Chi asked his own conclusion: "In other words, as long as we issue a command like 'operating system, add 300 lines of characters to the end of the text file named test, with 10 a's in each line,' it can automatically complete the file operation on the storage? Moreover, the file address is transparent to all software. When any software operates a file, it only needs to use the file name to operate it?"

"Yes! The operating system can do even more. But having a file name is not enough, the file path needs to be defined."

Chief Engineer Chi no longer cares what this "file path" is: "No need for more, no need for more, this one is good enough, this one is good enough."

This is a very pragmatic statement.

All the software personnel were delighted. Just this one function could make them lose a lot of hair.

If Gao Zhendong knew what they were thinking now, he would probably laugh out loud and die of laughter. After all, you can't save that little bit of hair.

Seeing their happiness, Gao Zhendong introduced another extremely practical function to them.

"You can directly call other programs in any program to complete the functions of other programs. For example."

Gao Zhendong opened the C editor and wrote a program called execprint. It was extremely simple, with only one function and only two lines of core code.

——Call vi to edit a file named test.txt, and then call the printing program print.e to print test.txt.

What is called is an external executable program, not something inside the program such as a library function or a built-in function.

After compiling, everyone watched him run the program by simply entering the execprint command.

Then vi started automatically. Gao Zhendong entered the famous string, saved and closed vi. Then the printer made a "hissing" sound and a piece of white paper came out.

For today's programmers or computer operators, calling each other between executable programs is something they have never considered, cannot do, or is very dangerous to do.

For example, if they want to complete the program that Gao Zhendong just demonstrated, the complete operation is as follows.

First open vi, edit test.txt, and exit vi. Then switch to the print program and print.

This is considered good luck. In the loop duty environment, there are both vi and print. If the two are not in the same environment, it will be more fun. Complete the vi operation first, then shut down the computer, change the tape or storage, mount the print software, and print.

It may not seem "too" troublesome, but the actual operation is completely different. Moreover, it involves the issue of automatic execution of a program, which is the core.

Of course, for Gao Zhendong's operating system, there is another way to implement these operations, which is to use scripts, but that is another issue.

Looking at the familiar line of "Ni Hao, ShiJie!", all the programmers shouted.

“This feature is great!”

"With this, I can save at least a quarter of my time!"

"Automatic program call. I have always wanted a similar function, but I just don't know how to implement it. It turns out that the loop monitoring environment framework is too rigid."

"Hello, Senior Sister!" Hmm? It seems like something strange has sneaked in.

Gao Zhendong struck while the iron was hot and demonstrated to them another method of automatically executing the above operations, batch processing files, or scripts, but Gao Zhendong felt that the name batch processing was more appropriate.

There was another commotion.

"This is even better. There's no need to compile. You can just use the existing software to create a complete new software."

"Batch processing is a good name. With this function, some simple repetitive operations can be performed automatically."

"Chief Engineer Gao even added C-like flow control statements into it. I can't help but accept it."

As the veil of the operating system was lifted bit by bit, Director Li and Chief Engineer Chi began to realize that what Gao Zhendong had just said was far from being as simple as they had initially thought, and it was of great significance.

It is not without problems. For example, with current memory, it can only be accessed on tapes. Don't even think about using magnetic cores or transistor memory because they are too expensive.

But is this the operating system's fault? No, it's our own fault. We can't afford enough high-speed memory.

Chief Engineer Chi was thinking back to what Gao Zhendong had just done, and suddenly discovered a point that no one had noticed.

"Chief Engineer Gao, can your operating system execute multiple programs at the same time? When I was editing in vi just now, it was obvious that the execprint program did not exit and was still running. Does this mean..."

Everyone then noticed this detail and fell into complete silence. If this was true, it would be completely subversive.

Today's computers are basically used for single tasks. In fact, this is because their performance is limited and they are good enough if they can complete one task.

But no matter what, the ability to run multiple tasks simultaneously is a great change, which means more possibilities.

Gao Zhendong smiled. Well, the evidence was wrong, but the conclusion was right.

"What about the one just now? That one doesn't count. In that one, I just used a stack operation similar to a function call to save the scene of execprint. In fact, only vi was running at that time. execprint resumed the scene after it finished running."

Everyone was a little disappointed, but also seemed relieved. This result seemed to make Chief Engineer Gao seem more down-to-earth.

"But." Well, the most frightening thing is "but".

Gao Zhendong didn't care what they were thinking and continued, "This operating system is indeed a multi-tasking operating system. It can execute multiple programs at the same time. At the same time, it is only at the macro time scale. At the micro scale, time is actually divided into many pieces, and they run in turn as needed."

"Wow!!!!!!"

Everyone exclaimed, "Can it be done this way?" In theory, this is indeed feasible. It's a time-based operation, just sprinkle some water, it's simple, but in reality, it's not simple at all!

At least everyone here, one by one, has never thought about how to do this.

Xiao Qin looked at Wu Shengyuan and the other two with envy in his eyes. This was the company they were going to, and this was their technical leader? So terrifying! Finally, they had caught a good opportunity.

"Hiss~~~~~~"

After getting Gao Zhendong's confirmation, Director Li and Chief Engineer Chi took a deep breath. It seemed that Chief Engineer Gao had not made any major moves in the computer field in the past few months, but they never expected that he would show his prowess in one fell swoop after being invisible all year round.

This turned out to be a big deal.

(End of this chapter)