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OPENSEQ

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Tags: record handling file handling

Description

Opens a file for sequential writing and/or reading. It takes the general form:

OPENSEQ Path{,File} {READONLY} TO FileVar {SETTING setvar} {ON ERROR statements} {LOCKED statements} THEN | ELSE statements

Where:

• Path specifies the relative or absolute path of the target directory or file,
• File specifies additional path information of the target file,
• FileVar contains the file descriptor of the file when the open was successful,
• Statements are conditional jBASE BASIC statements.

If the SETTING clause is specified and the read fails, setvar will be set to one of these Incremental File Error values.

If the ON ERROR clause is specified, the statements following the ON ERROR clause will be executed for any of the above Incremental File Errors except error 128.

Note

If the file does not exist or cannot be opened it then executes the ELSE clause. However, if JBCEMULATE is set for Sequoia (use value "seq") emulation, then OPENSEQ will create the file if it does not exist.
This behavior can also be achieved by specifying openseq_creates = true in Config_EMULATE for the emulation being used.
Once open. a lock is taken on the file. If the lock cannot be taken then the LOCKED clause is executed, if it exists, otherwise the ELSE clause is executed.
If specified, the READONLY process takes a read lock on the file, otherwise a write lock is taken.
The specified file can be a regular, pipe or special device file. Locks are only taken on regular file types.
When opened, the file pointer is set to the first line of sequential data.

A program that uses sequential processing to create (write to)an ASCII text file from a jBASE hashed file is as below. It illustrates the use of the commands:

OPENSEQ, WRITESEQ, WEOFSEQ,CLOSESEQ .

$option jabba
**set up working directory and file name here
if getcwd(v.dir.in) then
    v.file.in = 'trial.txt'
end

openseq v.dir.in, v.file.in to f.file.in then
    crt 'file already exists'
end  else
    crt 'file is being created....', v.file.in          ;*if openseq_creates=true
    stop
end

* open the jbase file
open "dummy_records" to jbasefile else
    stop 201
end
select jbasefile          ;* process all records

* now, let's loop thru each item and build the ascii text file.
loop while readnext id do
    read myrec from jbasefile, id then
        line = myrec

* process myrec and build the line variable with the information to be written to the ascii text file jbase automatically takes care of the
* end-of-line delimiters in this case a cr/lf is appended to the end of each line however, this can be changed with the ioctl() function .

        writeseq line to v.file.in else
            crt "what happened to the file?"
            stop
        end
    end
repeat

* wrapup
weofseq v.file.in
closeseq v.file.in

A program that uses sequential processing to read from an ASCII text file and write to a jBASE hashed file is as below. It illustrates the use of the commands:

OPENSEQ, READSEQ, CLOSESEQ

$option jabba
* First define the path to sequential file
if getcwd(directory) then
    path = directory:"\trial.txt"
end

openseq path to mypath else
    crt 'cannot find specified path or file (':path:')'
    abort
end

* open the jbase file
open "dummy_records" to jbasefile else stop 201

* process the line data to obtain the record_id and assign it to the ID variable, record information to
* myrec variable
ID= 1
eof= 0
loop until eof do
    readseq line from mypath then
        write line to jbasefile, ID
        ID += 1
    end else
        eof= 1
        crt 'End of file reached or error reading from file (':path:')'
    end
repeat

* wrapup
closeseq mypath

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