roy@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Herbert Roy) (03/08/89)
I am having a dBASE III+ problem on an IBM PC/XT. I have a general
ledger database with 2700 records which are indexed on the account code
and month (a total of 6 characters). Suppose data is deleted from the
indexed database and the database is later packed; when this indexed database
is used there is an error message that "...index file is damaged, REINDEX
should be done before using data, file is not accessible..." According to
the dBASE III+ manual this means that "... you attempted to engage an
indexed file and the indexing process for that file was previously
interrupted by pressing ESC..."
I tried this same procedure on two other machines and this error was
not reproducible. I tried adding 2 extra spaces to the index file (to
make it divisible by 4) on the original computer and still obtained the
same error. I tried to copy the database to another file, indexed that
and performed the procedure described in the above paragraph and still
got an error. I tried to copy the file to another file by appending
and replacing with data from the original database (both while indexed and
not) which proceeded without error. However, when deleting files then
packing the database the index file was still damaged. I took the
original database, copied it to an ASCII format (SDF) and appended
this data to a new database file with the same fields as the original
database; again the index file was damaged when I deleted records
and packed the indexed database. This evening, I printed out the ASCII
file, this time delimited with quotation marks, and no printing error
was observed--I think there is a corrupted record(s) in database.
I checked the harddisk with CHKDSK/F and Norton's Utilities
"DT C: /B" command, which tested the harddisk and all files, and no
errors were found. This indexing problem does not occur with
other indexed database files on the IBM PC/XT.
Does anyone have any suggestions? If so, reply to roy@elbereth and I
will post a summary to the net.
From,
Herbert C. Roy
Center of Alcohol Studies
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ
roy@elbereth