Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!apple!dan
From: dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Read to/From file
Message-ID: <15244@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 7 Aug 88 03:44:11 GMT
References: <572@pedro.UUCP>
Reply-To: dan@apple.apple.com.UUCP (Dan Allen)
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 21

In article <572@pedro.UUCP> benjamin_kuo@pedro.UUCP (Benjamin Kuo) writes:
>According to the 1.2 new release stack, HyperCard cannot APPEND text files. 
>It can only read in whole files, and dump out whole files--there is no way 
>to add to an existing file. 

Write you are (no pun intended!)  HyperCard can NOT append.  However, if
you use read and write with a buffersize of 16384, it goes pretty quick.
You could read in a file with
	read from file fileName for 16384
and write it out, and then continue to write your stuff.

But this is a bad solution.  The best solution is to write a simple XCMD
that does the appending for you.  Chances are that if you are doing
stuff with files 30 times a day, you are a prime candidate for a set of
several XCMDs which would most likely improve your performance anywhere
from a factor of 2 to a factor of 200, depending upon what you are
doing.  If this is a commercial venture, then write XCMDs.  They are
very useful.

Dan Allen
Apple Computer