[BUG] write to file

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Tue Jan 26 11:22:52 EST 2016


Kay C Lan wrote:
 > On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 9:49 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >
 >> Good find.  How did you come across that bit of archaeology?
 >
 > Not that good, what you really need to know is whether the enhancement
 > request was ever actioned.

I'd guess the URL form remains as Jacque described, a whole-file 
operation.  It only takes a couple extra lines to do the 
open/write/close alternative, and in the minority of cases in which we 
need fine-grained control over file I/O it's no more onerous than the 
only file I/O syntax the root tongue, HyperTalk, offered.

It'd be nice to have, but the team has a long list ahead of them, and 
relatively few engine contributions from the community to fill in the 
gaps on these nice-to-haves.

I'm just grateful we have the various "open file" modes at all - being 
able to use "update" and "append" are godsends for a wide range of tasks 
involving large files.

Even better, Mark Waddingham updated the file I/O stuff a few versions 
back so that it can accept >32-bit values for the length in the file 
spec, allowing us to traverse files > 4 GB.  It's not often I have to do 
that, but I discovered the older limitation when I was given a 6.2 GB 
file to slice and dice and now I can do so with ease, using "seek" to 
jump around in the file to get the parts I need.


 > I was searching the QCC DB to ensure I wasn't duplicating a Bug report
 > when, like most archaeological digs, I stumbled across a gem.

Your find prompted me to do a search in the bug DB for all reports that 
include "scott at runrev.com" among the commenters and found some other 
gems from the olden days, like this useful tidbit I never knew before 
(is this documented?):

    ...you can use numbers of the form "0xFFFFFFFF" directly
    in scripts, saving you the rigamarole of using numToChar
    to build them up...
<http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=295#c5>

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com





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