Re: Update primary filre

Barbara,

I haven't tried it in many years, since the limitations made it unattractive to use. I thought a RAF referred to the output of a FMTDTA; we've called it a limits file. I think that the "R" in the F spec is optional. Each record of the limits file is twice the length of the key. So if the alpha key is 10 characters and I wanted all record values starting from D through F, and W through Y, the records would contain:
12345678901234567890
D FZZZZZZZZZ
W YZZZZZZZZZ

That works fine when there is one key. But, IIRC, for a compound key using an externally described limits file would be a lot easier, but the compiler doesn't allow it.

-mark


At 4/27/09 05:43 PM, you wrote:

M. Lazarus wrote:
>
> Along the same lines, is there any reason that limits file
> processing hasn't been expanded to use externally described file fields?
>

Do you mean for the record-address file (the one coded with IR)? I
don't know why you can't have an externally-described RAF file.

When they first added externally-described support in whatever release
of system 38, they must have thought it was only necessary to allow the
rafdata file to be externally-described.

But I guess the advantage of having the RAF file externally-described
would be that you wouldn't have to hard-code the record length to be
double the key length of the rafdata file.