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From: ART100@PSUVM.PSU.EDU ("Andy Tefft  725-1344", 814)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Applesoft problem: finding the end of a text file
Message-ID: <9101160415.AA11360@apple.com>
Date: 16 Jan 91 04:15:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 21

Under Prodos, you almost don't NEED to use the "read" command to read
text files. You have a lot of room as a programmer to read files
under prodos which you didn't have in dos 3.3. I can think of two
solutions:

1). read in chunks of the file using BLOAD with the TTXT parameter.
You can use the B and L parameters to identify which sections to read
in. You can then go through and parse out the info.
Kind of a pain for variable length records though.

2) (I haven't done one of these in a long time...) write your own
read command. Would be quite simple with a couple of mli calls...
you could even use an & command to allow some parameters. You could
set a string to the filename to use, then in assembly you would
put this string in the pathname buffer to do your mli calls.
With a proper setting of newline read mode, you can read one line
at a time. Also this routine would check for the eof condition
and return this info to your program either in some memory location
or a variable.

Well, of course, it may just be simpler to use an onerr goto.