Field limit?

[Jacqueline Landman Gay]

Shari wrote:
> 
> I have a very large text file I wanted to import into a field.
> 
> When I use the IMPORT button, the entire file ends up on one line,
> even with the wrapping turned on.  And it doesn't import the entire
> file.
> 
> When I use a script to import,
> 
> open file theFile
> read from file theFile until eof
> close file theFile
> put it into cd fld someField
> 
> it only puts a very very small portion of theFile into the field.  I
> mean about a paragraph.
> 
> When I expand the import script to go through the file and delete
> about 2/3 of it, it pastes the result into the field, but all in 4
> lines, so that each line is overwritten several times and you cannot
> read the result.
> 
> I can import the file and put it into a global variable, and the
> entire file is in the variable, with no problem.

It sounds like the file has no natural word breaks. Some Mac apps will
break a line in the middle of a word if there isn't any other choice,
but MC doesn't. So it all shows up on one line, or if there is an
occasional space or return, just a few lines. The overwriting on the
same line sounds like a bug.

If you only need to store the info and don't need to display it, store
it in a custom property. That will act just as though it were in a variable.

Storing the file inside the stack won't help with the load times though.
MC still has to load it, whether it is from an external file on disk or
from its own stack file. You should get identical results when the stack
opens whether you store the text inside the stack itself, or whether you
read it in from an external file on openstack. The only reason to store
it inside the stack would be to keep both files consolidated into one on disk.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com