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1989-12-24
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File-It
by John Davis
This directory contains a simple database, together with the DRACO
source code.
It was originally written as an assignment for a Stage 3 computing
course at the University of Canterbury, and was prototyped on a cp/m
system ( in Turbo Pascal 3 ) and then ported to a Prime 750 mini-
computer ( under Sheffield Pascal ).
It was then ported to the Amiga and translated into DRACO, largely as
a learning exercise to become familiar with the language ( and
especially its CRT library ).
What is DRACO?
DRACO is a full-featured, compiled language, available in the Public
Domain. It is a hybrid of Pascal and C, having Pascal style syntax,
and C's ability for low level, system access. It is a fast compiler,
allows full access to the Amiga's Operating System via libraries,
supports separate compilation, and produces tight, fast-running code.
If you are looking for a good language for Amiga progaramming, and you
cannot afford a commercial C or Modula-2 compiler, then DRACO offers an
excellent alternative .... especially since it is FREE.
About File-It.
File-It very much shows it's cp/m | Prime origins. It was designed to be
very portable, and therefore does not make use of any of Intuition's
facilities, just the terminal emulation library DRACO provides. What
it really needs is a full blown Intuition front end. Whether I ever
actually get time to do this anybody's guess. If somebody wishes to
take the program under their wing and extend it ... feel free. The
entire package has been placed in the Public Domain.
Some other features File-It might gain .... one day :-)
The ability to INCLUDE from any level ( minute change in the source
code required, all of an hours work .... would nicely extend its
abilities )
Some sort of indexing facility. Indexing all fields would take too
much room, but indexing on, say, one key field ( with only one word in
the key field ), would be useful. The ultimate would be to ask whether
to index each field when the database is created.
True compound operations ... allowing the user to use AND OR NOT XOR
etc ... again to make the queries more powerful.
Any limits ( on record size, field size, database size, number of
levels etc ) are purely arbitrary, and can be quickly changed by
recompiling. They were chosen partly as a quirk of history ( Turbo
Pascal and Sheffield Pascal both have 64k limits on data ), partly as
a compromise on memory usage ( whilst the records are stored on disk,
the allocation bit-maps are stored in memory ).
If you have any queries about the package, DRACO or the meaning of
life, then I am reachable at the below address.
John Davis
31 Clarence St.
Christchurch 2 New Zealand.
OR via E'mail on
The HitchHikers Guide BBS
Phone : (03)-430-461,
Christchurch , New Zealand.