Re: Opening the same file twice in the same program?

If you have a master file and a large transactions file to post against the
master (think financial or inventory applications). The master is the
primary, the transaction file is the secondary, and the program will run at
warp speed, like the volume is set to 11. Yeah, it's a unit-record
holdover and those System/3 5444 disks were painfully slow. Isn't random
access great?

On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 3:00 PM James H. H. Lampert via RPG400-L <
rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 8/1/23 2:10 PM, Justin Taylor wrote:

Sounds like you're doing RPG RLA and want two File specs using the same
PF. Check out the EXTFILE File spec keyword.

It worked. Thanks. I didn't think it would be this simple, but it almost
is. "Almost" because it also needs an EXTDESC and a RENAME, i.e. (note
that spaces are squeezed out for email purposes):

FFOOBAR IP E DISK EXTDESC('FOO/FOOBAR')
F EXTFILE(*EXTDESC)
F RECNO(RRN)
FBOZBAR UF E DISK EXTDESC('FOO/FOOBAR')
F EXTFILE(*EXTDESC)
F RENAME(FOOREC:BOZREC)

(I'm even using an EXTDESC and EXTFILE on the primary, for absolute
LIBL-independence, and there's also a RECNO clause on the primary,
because the PF is unkeyed, and there's no key that's especially useful.)

And Jon, my attitude about riding The Cycle is that you should use any
language feature that you find useful, especially if it's idiomatic
and/or unique to the language. And there's probably nothing in RPG
that's more idiomatic or unique to the language than The Cycle. So why
walk when you can ride?

That's not to say that I've ever found secondary files to be even
remotely useful enough to be worth figuring out how to use them.

--
JHHL

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