number of records answer...sort of :)

[Fairlight]

Well, I created an alien file on SCO OSR 5.0.6 of just single line Y
records.  I got a file that was 1999999998 records long before I hit the
2GB file limitation.  This is with a single character field with a single
character between records, where fP would have a 20-byte header betore each
record.

After an alien overlay, I got the following from dclerk:

         Enter Record Number (1-1999999998):

Problems:

     1) You can only enter 8 digits.  You can only go to the 99,999,999th 
        record via IUA "Select by Record Number", and @rn apparently is 
        limited to 8 places as well, as you found.  You can enter up to the
        eight 9's, and then down arrow and go manually, and it works--and
        even displays the correct record number in the bottom-right corner.
        You just can't get there manually or use @rn to reference them.

     2) You'll never be able generate more than that number of records even
        with one character per field, one field per record, on a 32bit fs
        that suffers from the 2gig file limit.  
               int(2000000000 / 21) = 95,238,095

So basically it doesn't make a bit of difference on 2gig file limited
versions (or at least platforms, assuming fP is adjusted for UnixWare, AIX,
Solaris and such.  You can't create more than that many files, and that's a
totally useless file due to the lack of distinctive data.  Not being able
to select or discriminate data past the @rn limitation is superceded by the
2gig file limit currently in force.

I imagine when they release the >2gig file limit versions, they'll address
these issues.

Personally, I think if you have over a hundred million records, you probably
need to be on something enterprise-grade like DB2, for various other
considerations besides this stuff.

mark->
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