Re: Update primary filre

["M. Lazarus" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx>]

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.