'It tends to be forgotten, but one of the most innovative things in
Unix was the conception of files as arrays of bytes that, because of
their simplicity, could be created almost as afterthoughts.
The mainframes of the day, and even the time sharing systems built on
them, treated file creation as a big deal.
In the Honeywell time sharing system, you created files by entering a
file-creation subsystem, where you were interactively asked 10
questions, including the device name, initial size, maximum size,
record size, blocking factor (don't ask!) and who was allowed to write
the file and who was not allowed to read it. After answering these
questions, the subsystem begged the OS to create a file -- much of the
time, it was allergic to one of the answers, and required you to go
through all the questions again. If you got through the process
unscathed, the system printed out "Successful!"
(yes, the exclamation point was there).'