PMDF System Manager's Guide

The options described in this section affect the format of various PMDF files and affect the handling of message files.

COMMENT_CHARS (integer list {33, 59})

This option controls what characters are taken to signal a comment when they appear in the first column of various PMDF input files. The value of this option takes the form of a list of ASCII character values in decimal. The default is the list {33, 59}, which specifies exclamation points and semicolons as comment introduction characters.

FSYNC (0 or 1; UNIX and NT only)

On UNIX and NT platforms, the FSYNC option can be used to cause PMDF to use the fsync function (UNIX) or FlushFileBuffers function (NT) to flush disk output when closing a message file. If such flushing is not performed explicitly by PMDF, it is left up to the O/S to perform on its own timetable; potentially, if a UNIX or NT system crashes at just the wrong moment, messages not yet synched to disk could be lost. The tradeoff, however, is that performing explicit flushing for every message incurs a performance penalty. FSYNC=1, meaning that flushes are performed explicitly by PMDF, is the default, ensuring message safety at the expense of a performance hit.