Re: Suggestion for Fileman.e
On Sat, 6 Mar 1999 11:06:32 -0500, lgregg at BIG12.METROBBS.COM wrote:
>How about using the next 255 bytes after the 255 length bytes,
>to indicate the types of the 255 possible fields in the file.
>We could let 0 be a Euphoria object, 1 be a sequence, 2
>be an atom and 3 be an integer. Then, if other field types
>are needed, you could define another 254 of them. I imagine
>that would suffice for most purposes. This would allow the
>checking of field types both on input and output.
Larry,
Thanks for your suggestion. The way FILEMAN is written now, it makes no
assumptions about what kind of data a program will read or write. I can
definitely see the usefulness of assigning type to fields, but it seems
to me that there would be a lot of overhead associated with that. Another
problem would be that if a type-check error occurred, there is no way to
trap it from within FILEMAN.
For now, I think I'll table your idea and see how some 'real-life' programs
has to deal with some of the issues yet to be ironed out with FILEMAN. If
working with numeric fields (for example) ends up to be a big pain in the
neck, I may incorporate something similar to what you've suggested.
BTW, I have to agree with Daniel regarding SQL. I've already been modeling
some of my code after xBase, and probably shouldn't change horses in
mid-stream.
The next release of FILEMAN is almost ready. All I need to do is write
and debug a short demo, and then it will be ready for testing.
Thanks again,
Brian Jackson
bjackson at printinginc.com
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