autoshuffle and COPY -- a cautionary tale...

[Bill Vermillion]

On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 12:11:50PM -0500, Jay R. Ashworth thus
spoke:

> 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.

I had one place that had four files with identical structures.
One for entry only, which moved to the real app, anohter for
processed/expired, and one for old archives.

I'd run a 'diff' on the map and the only thing that I would expect to
return would be the encrypted password/header.   Before I did that
I did make sure that all spellings were correct in all files.

That was before so many things we do know were supported.  This was
on a 3.0.  'diff' is part of the SFU [Services for Unix] on XP Pro.


Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com