silvert@dalcs.UUCP (07/21/87)
The idea of using the name and other attributes of a file to store
information has been around for a while. Some programmers create a
special file to store time (the WORD... program did this, with a file
called TIME.INF), but it is a lot more reasonable to just touch the file
itself (change its creation date). As for using the file name, the
second version of my ZZZAP program (which I translated into Modula-2
from someone elses initial posting in C) uses the last letter of the
name to define which ramdisk to clean up (this is a utility to run after
autodisk which erases the AUTO folder and all accessories from the
ramdisk). This was posted a long time back.
One possible problem with this might be size. You need to search for
the filename using the SFIRST business, which can add to the size of
your file. I don't think even John Harris could write a 640K ram disk
with this feature! However, it is still a lot more compact than keeping
a few descriptive bytes in a separate file.
--
Bill Silvert, Modelling/Statistics Group, Marine Fish Division
Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 4A2
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