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From: dattier@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (David W. Tamkin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Can REL files be copied?
Summary: Geoffrey, that was the whole idea.
Keywords: What did you expect?
Message-ID: <474@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US>
Date: 13 Apr 89 05:42:19 GMT
References: <2030.2442CAD5@isishq.FIDONET.ORG>
Reply-To: dattier@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (David W. Tamkin)
Organization: Jolnet Public Access Unix
Lines: 37

Geoffrey Welsh wrote in <2030.2442CAD5@isishq.FIDONET.ORG> in comp.sys.cbm:

| > From: dwtamkin@chinet.chi.il.us (David W. Tamkin)
| > Message-ID: <8190@chinet.chi.il.us>
|  
| > One difficulty in copying relative files is that EOI (st=64) is sent at the
| > end of every record.  The only way to know when to stop reading is an error
| > 50 (record not present) from the source disk.  The other is that BASIC's
| > INPUT#, GET#, and PRINT# commands respectively untalk, untalk, and unlisten
| > the addressed device when they are done, and unlistening or untalking a
| > disk drive with an open relative file bumps the record pointer to the
| > start of the next higher record.
|  
|    Sorry to say this, but that serves you right for doing this in BASIC. File
| copying accross devices is slow enough without introducing the fun of a BASIC 
| interpreter. And, as you say, the BASIC commands do things you don't want
| them to. That's always the risk when using a high-level language.

Well, for those of you who saw this out of context, the bumping of the
record pointer plus the slowness were two reasons I recommended against
using BASIC.  Welsh *did* understand that, but those of you who didn't see
my article or who rely on smileys might need one after the "serves you
right" observation.

There might be other high-level languages that hold your hand without
cutting off your circulation; when it comes to relative files, Commodore
BASIC is not among them.  (In BASIC 3.5 and higher, when you have fixed-
length fields, the RECORD# command can undo the damage; however, the copy
program would need to figure out the lengths of the fields [by measuring the
strings so far from that record?], and that gets to be a major pain.  A copy
program should just grab a whole record without giving a hell what its
contents mean to any application programs, as Welsh's example shows.)

David W. Tamkin   POB 567542   Norridge IL  60656-7542  |       8 Nisan 5749
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Anyone on Jolnet who agrees with me is welcome to speak up on his or her own.