Conference vaxuum::document_ft

642.0. "Troubles with fixed length records" by RTOADC::CAAHANS (Hans Bachner, ADG Munich) Mon Jul 13 1987 05:30

    Does DOCUMENT accept only files with variable record length format?
    
    We have a (fast-hack) program that extracts info from a data file,
    inserts a few DOCUMENT tags (mainly <p>s) and writes 132 byte records
    to a file. If DOCUMENT (FT Update) is invoked with this input file,
    we get the following weird messages:
    
    %TAG-F-ERROPEINP, at text on line 0 in file
       DISK:[DIRECTORY]JUNK.SDML;
       Cannot open input file:
       DISK:[DIRECTORY]JUNK.SDML;
    -RMS-S-NORMAL, normal successful completion
    -SYSTEM-W-IVQUOTAL, invalid quota list
    
    It puzzles me somewhat that
    - a RMS success message converts to a DOCUMENT fatal error
    - a message code returned by $CREPRC is quoted to be the initial
      error
    
    BTW, if the file is NOT created with the fixed record length attribute
    (or converted to variable record length), DOCUMENT processes the
    file as expected. So this behaviour does not stop our DOCUMENTing;
    however, you may add it to your buglist.
    
    Hans.

    The tag translator looks at the status returned from an open
    call.  If it is greater than 0, the tag translator puts out the
    fatal error message.  This is probably too simple an approach.
    
    It appears that opening a fixed length record file results 
    in some kind of "error" return that may actually be
    acceptable, if we bothered to look at it and filter it out of
    all the other more serious error returns.  You could probably
    read a relative file or an indexed sequential file as well.
    
    I'll put this on the list of things to investigate for v1.1.
    All the files that we ever tested must have come from editors
    or "hack" programs that wrote variable length record sequential
    files.
    
    bill
    

 I recall a discussion on problems with Pascal opening files
 using fixed length text records. This was in the context of
 a question how to make a "general purpose opener" routine
 that would accept all sorts of files...
 No doubt John Reagan of the Pascal group may shed some light
 on this.

Theo

    thanks, Theo.      bill