Do I remember that Digital's VMS OS didn't have text files, only records?
Sort of. Original VMS had a block-structured file system on top of which the records were layered. However, it supported both fixed and variable-length records, as well as sequential, random, and indexed access (essentially cloned from IBM's VSAM). Variable-length sequential records were the moral equivalent of text files.
Later on, stream organization was added to support C and C++ programming.
