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SIMPLEDB.TXT
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2006-10-19
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1993 IN LIMA NEWSLETTER
THE SIMPLEST EASIEST KIND OF DATABASE:
Using the computer to search the Lima library
disk listings for specific software
by Charles Good
Lima Ohio User Group
Several months ago at one of the Lima group's regular meetings, a member
asked me where he could find Multiplan templates in the group's software
library. Since I didn't know exactly, it was necessary to search printed
directories and the commented listings of all of the 800+ disks in the library
to find them all . I decided there had to be an easier way. After all,
commented listings of all disks in our library, and the disk directories, are
all in DV80 text files. Surely the computer could search these text files and
find all references to the word Multiplan. Why not use Funnelweb's Disk Review
in I(nspect) a library listing file and search that file or an entire disk of
library listing files for the string "Multiplan"? Unfortunately it wasn't as
easy as that.
Over the years, as I have been adding disks to the group's library I have
been adding DSKU comments to the disks in both upper and lower case. A disk
with Multiplan stuff may have a comment such as "All these files are Multiplan
templates." Such commented listings look good and are easy to read when
printed on paper, but it is hard for the computer to find all Multiplan
references in such text. That is because sometimes I spelled it "MULTIPLAN",
and sometimes "Multiplan". The 99/4A disk operating system doesn't know that
these are both the same. Another example would be Ms Pacman vs MS PACMAN. An
IBM system using MS-DOS would recognize both of these as the same. MS-DOS is
not case sensitive. 99/4A DOS is case sensitive. What I should have done all
along is USE ONLY UPPER CASE in our library listing text files. I will do this
in the future.
I wrote the XB program below to convert existing Lima library listing files
into all upper case. Put as many of these all upper case files as you can on a
disk or ramdisk. Using Funnelweb's Disk Review bring up a disk directory, press
I, select DISK SEARCH, choose ASCII, and then type an upper case key word or
text string you want to look for. The computer will search THE ENTIRE DISK for
this string and display each sector where the string is found. Use CTRL/N or
CTRL/B to page sector display foreward or backwards until you see the name or
number of the disk that contains your software.
Members of the Lima UG can request these ALL UPPER CASE DV80 library
listings by sending the equivalent 12 DSSD disks and a paid return mailer to
the group's mailing address.
This sort of text file data base has many uses. For example, if you have
a large collection of music CDs tapes and phonograph records you may have
trouble trying to find one particular song on all this media. Just take any TI
Writer-like word processor, such as Funnelweb, and use all upper case to enter
each tape or CD titile, artist, and all the songs. Use any format you want
such as putting all the information for one CD/tape in a separate paragraph.
Save these data files to disk as ordinary text files. When you want to find
all the references to a particular song use F(ind) S(tring) from within the
word processor to search a single text file, or I(nspect) from within
Funnelweb's Disk Review to search a whole disk of files. It is easy and fast
since the searches are at assembly language speed.
.NF
.NA
50 REM SAVE DSK6.UPPERCASE
60 REM Converts all LOWER CASE of DV80 file to
UPPER CASE.
70 REM Resulting ALL UPPER CASE text can easily be
80 REM searched for text strings by sector editors.
90 ON ERROR 100
100 CALL CLEAR
110 DISPLAY AT(3,2):"CONVERT DV80 TO UPPER CASE"
120 INPUT "Enter OUTPUT FILE path ":OUTPUTFILE$
130 INPUT "Enter INPUT FILE path ":INPUTFILE$
140 OPEN #1:INPUTFILE$,INPUT
150 OPEN #2:OUTPUTFILE$,APPEND
160 LINPUT #1:TEXT$
170 PRINT TEXT$ :: PRINT
180 FOR T=1 TO LEN(TEXT$)
190 A=ASC(SEG$(TEXT$,T,1)):: IF A>96 THEN A=A-32
200 B$=B$&CHR$(A)
210 NEXT T
220 PRINT #2:B$ :: B$=""
240 IF EOF(1)THEN 260
250 GOTO 160
260 CLOSE #1
270 CLOSE #2
280 GOTO 100
.PL 1