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1988-11-29
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Documentation for ABOOK_
There are two versions of ABOOK; one written in Turbo Basic and the
other written in Turbo C. I use the latter although it has one rather
glaring bug that I will fix REAL SOON NOW. It does not allow for dup-
licate last names! I will explain how to get around that later. Both
operate in an otherwise efficient and speedy manner. Neither currently
supports printouts other than by the 'PRT SC' key. For me, this is not
a problem and I suspect it's not critical to most others. Besides, these
were written as exercizes and not for commercial distribution. Which
brings me (sadly) to the usual disclaimer:
The author takes no responsibilty for any damage to data, media, or
other hardware as a result of the use of this program. There is no
warranty either expressed or implied concerning these programs. They
have not damaged my system, however, and I would not share them if I
felt there was any real possibilty that they could cause harm. The
only warning I would give is that if you have files called "ADDRESS.DAT"
or "NAMES.DAT" you should copy them to another disk and/or rename them
before running these programs.
Both of these programs were written to be used without instructions.
At least, that was the intent. They are menu driven and I believe self
explanatory. They assume that the DAT files are located in your CURRENT
directory, this was because I did not want to limit people to the root
directory or make them create a directory they may not want. If you wish
you may create a BAT file to place yourself in the desired directory and
then run the program. An example might be:
echo off
cd \adrbook
abookc
cls
This can be created with copy con or EDLIN (why do people hate that
editor?) or your favorite word processor.
ABOOKC.EXE - written in Turbo C and uses windows. It takes less
memory (under 20K) and is faster (I believe). It
keeps its data in the ADDRESS.DAT file. The only
problem with it when you are searching for a name
and there are two or more entries with the same last
name. There are a couple of ways around this (which is
probably why I have not corrected it):
1. Don't bother looking for a duplicate under
individual entries, just list all with phone
or addresses.
2. If the first search is wrong and you are under
the edit option, the next time you ask for the
name you will get a different entry (with the same
last name, of course). For example: suppose you
have two entries with the last name of LaFlame;
Wanda and Rosie. The first request for LaFlame
gets you Rosie but you wanted Wanda's phone number.
Just hit '0' and ask for LaFlame again. This time
Wanda will show up. If you're looking under indi-
vidual entries (not edit), return to the main menu
and press 's'. This will force a re-sort of the
data and the names will get juggled around.
3. Add a character to the last name for each entry
(like a, b, etc) but this is a bit awkward because
you have to remember who was who.
4. Don't record duplicate names.
ABOOKB.EXE - written in Turbo Basic and expects you to have a clock
and calendar. It does not fully alphabetize, just sort
of lumps the names in groups based on the first char-
acter of the last name (much like a hand written address
book). It does not have a problem with duplicate last
names because you can enter both first and last names
when requesting a search.
I'm looking for suggestions on what to do about the duplicate name
problem in the Turbo C version. I don't want to do the same thing
I did with the Basic version. So drop me a note via this board or
write to:
D. Haire
11026 Knottingby Dr.
Jacksonville, Fl 32257