Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!raybed2!rayssd!anomaly!mpd
From: mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Clipper: Okay, now I'm really pissed
Keywords: arrays SAVE
Message-ID: <1991Apr28.150722.17105@anomaly.sbs.com>
Date: 28 Apr 91 15:07:22 GMT
References: <1991Apr27.210921.9751@anomaly.sbs.com> <27535@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Organization: Small Business Systems, Inc., Esmond, RI  02917
Lines: 37

jgb@prism.gatech.EDU (James G. Baker) writes:

>Sorry you're so upset.  Although there *are* libraries out there for a
>few cents that will allow you to save arrays, you could write a function
>that would save an array's contents to a disk file or database.

Of course I could. BUT, I would like to be able to say something like

SAVE TO <file> ALL LIKE v*

Where the v* variables are a combination of "normal" data elements and
some array types. A function which just saves arrays wouldn't help in
this case.


>It's a 
>bit of a kludge, but back with '86 (when arrays were a dream) and even '87
>I concatenated all the elements with ~ separating them.  Multi-dimensional
>arrays would be trickier - probably worth the library.

Sure, there are ways to get around it - I've had to use some of them.

>It is more complicated to save arrays than ol' memvars.  The dimensions 
>are fairly dynamic and each element can be different data types, which is
>nice but undoubtedly hell for the compiler to do right.

I can't buy this one. After all, Nantucket gave us such useful tools to
manipulate the sizes of arrays - you mean they couldn't use some of those
same techniques like AADD, etc., when they were RESTORE-ing an array?

MD

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