Preliminary comment
The term old does not refer to the distinction between these statements in Unicode and compatibility mode but to the file access statements originally developed for EDT. These remain valid in both operating modes.
The old file access statements @READ, @GET, @WRITE (format 2), @SAVE, @ELIM and @OPEN (format 2) are subject to certain restrictions. They are not able to process all file types and certain accesses are only possible using workarounds (definition of file link names). They provide a number of special functions for the supported file types. These are described in the present section.
If a file is read into the current work file using the @READ or @GET statements then the file is closed again immediately after being read in. The file is then not opened again for writing until a @WRITE or @SAVE statement is issued. If the UPDATE operand is not specified in these statements, the old file content is deleted and completely replaced. The file is not locked for other users while it is being processed. During a write operation, it is therefore possible that intermediate changes made by other users may be overwritten.