Shareware Grab Bag/Shareware Grab Bag.iso/007/indent.arc/INDENT.DOC

Text File | 1985-10-06 | 4KB | 83 lines

                             INDENT.PRG V3.5

        This program was designed to make editing your  dBase  program
        files  easier.  Now  you  will  no  longer need to worry about
        keeping program indentions 100%  correct  to  facilitate  easy
        reading later on.

        Please note:  this version has had some bugs removed that were
        found in the earlier versions.  If you have  old  versions  of
        indent, you may wish to remove them.

        Some  notes on indent:  Indent.prg requires an additional file
        to function, called indent.dbs.  Indent.dbs is a database file
        created  by  typing CREATE INDENT.DBS (that's right,  .DBS not
        .DBF). The structure for this file is shown below:

                Structure for database : C:INDENT.DBS
                Number of data records :       0
                Date of last update    : 08/14/85
                Field  Field name  Type       Width    Dec
                    1  LINE        Character    254
                ** Total **                     254

        Indent will also leave a note behind as to  when  the  program
        file  was last updated if you wish for it to.  This is done by
        adding the line:

                **  LAST UPDATE: 00:00:00 00/00/00

        to your program.  Each time you run indent,  it will  put  the
        system date and time into this line. This feature was added to
        keep track of mutiple versions of any particular program.

        Indent  will indent any filename,  with any extention.  But if
        you do not speciy an extention,  indent will automatically add
        .PRG to the end of the filename.

        Indent  also  generates  a  .BAK  file  when it indents,  that
        contains a copy of  your  program  as  it  sat  before  indent
        started working on it.  If indent it interrupted, the lines in
        your program file will basically  turn  into  garbage.  Indent
        cannot  be  interrupted  using  the  escape  key  once  it has
        actually begun indenting your file because of  the  damage  to
        your program file this would cause.

        Indent adds space characters to the beginning of all the lines
        it is indenting. Each of these space characters takes 14/10000
        of a second to be processed by dBase.  FOR THIS REASON, PLEASE
        DO NOT RE-INDENT THE INDENT PROGRAM FILE.  Indent has been re-
        written many times with just one objective, speed. Indent used
        to take 1.8 seconds (average) to process one line of text from
        our original test program file. Indent now takes 0.366 seconds
        to process the same line of code.  (Please note that the speed
        of the indent program depends on the average  length  of  each
        line of text in the program file as well as the average number
        of spaces of indention in the program file.  Your 'seconds per
        line' results will be  different  for  that  reason.  we  have
        found  it  much  more  reasonable to expect .5 to .6 sec/line.
        These times were run with an AT&T PC6300.)

        If you re-indent indent,  you will slow execution time by  10-
        30%.  To  increse  program speed another 5%,  remove the "'at'
        14,8 say recn()" line from the program.

        One last word on speed, processing only the first 4 characters
        of a command speeds program execution time by 10%, that is why
        the code looks so strange.  THIS PROGRAM,  RUN ON A 1200  LINE
        PROGRAM  FILE,  NOW  TAKES APROX 11 MINIUTES (ON AN AT&T 6300)
        ORIGINAL RUN-TIME WAS 51 MINIUTES (ON AN AT&T 6300). Depending
        on the width of the original indentions,  a 100  line  program
        can take less than 1 miniute.