COHERENT manpages
This page displays the COHERENT manpage for block [Technical Information].
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block -- Technical Information 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 Using COHERENT, ANSI Standard, §3.6.2