autoshuffle and COPY -- a cautionary tale...

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 11:09:58AM -0600, Mike Schwartz-PC Support & Services wrote:
> > Took me almost *three hours* to figure out that the problem is that
> > COPY copies on an ordinal field basis, skipping undefined fields.  If
> > you have matched files, and you add fields in the middle of one, MAKE
> > SURE you add them to the other.
> 
> 	This is a good reason to use a qualifier file as the temporary file.
> If anybody chances a field in the main file, then all the qualifier fields
> automatically get shuffled to match.  
> 
> 	<sympathy mode on> I often get called to look at filePro code that
> was written by programmers who have moved on.  (Have Cessna, will travel...)
> A lot of it was written many years ago by people doing the same thing.
> <sympathy mode off>
> 
> 	So, I've learned to grep the first few lines of each map, then print
> them, so that I can try to detect this same problem.  Having just the first
> few fields of each map usually gives me a quick reference that is handy to
> have in my other work when I'm debugging a strange system.

Oh, it's *much* more embarrassing than that: it was *documented at the
head of the map*.

I merely forgot that it applied to *three* files in this case
(main,archive,*temp*), cause it usually only applies to two; and the
third file was not named wohdrtmp, as it should have been.

> 	<joke mode on> I reason that if I can't figure out what a file does
> by looking at the first 5 lines, then it probably isn't all that important!
> <joke mode off>     

;-)

> 	Actually, now that I bought a Piper Cherokee, I'm going to have to

Fly me to Connecticut next weekend?  :-)

> change that Cessna by-line on my business cards...

Oh.  :-{

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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        "They had engineers in my day, too."  -- Perry Vance Nelson