Reading/Deleting Last Line Of File

[Richard Gaskin]

Alex Tweedly wrote:

> Richard Gaskin wrote:
>> That looks similar to what I posted here on the 9th:
>>
>>    open file tFile for update
>>    seek relative -1000 in file tFile
>>    repeat
>>       read from file tFile until cr
>>       if it is not empty then
>>          put it after tBuffer
>>       else
>>          delete last line of tBuffer
>>          write tBuffer to file tFile
>>       end if
>>    end repeat
>>    close file tFile
>>
>> Does that not do what you need?
>>
> No, it doesn't. If a file is opened for 'update' then any write to the
> file simply overwrites any existing characters at the appropriates
> position(s), and leaves everything following that unchanged. There is no
> EOF implied by a write in update mode.

Good catch.  Seems my instinct to use "append" in my first version of 
that was closer to the mark.

But FWIW, I tried your version and it seemed to leave the file unchanged 
- is this a user error on my end, or does it have a limitation I overlooked?

 > on deletelastline pFile
 >    constant K = 1000
 >    put the detailed files into t
 >    filter t with URLEncode(pFile) & ",*"
 >    put item 2 of t into tFileLength
 >
 >    open file pFile for read
 >    seek to tFileLength-K in  file pFile
 >    read from file pFile until end
 >    close file pFile
 >
 >    put the number of chars in the last line of it into tNum
 >
 >    open file pFile for append
 >    write empty to file pFile at (tFileLength-tNum-3)
 >    close file pFile
 >
 > end deletelastline

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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