FW: Browse records

[John Esak]

> I was recently looking at a clients data and loaded some
> of there browse formats. After loading a screen format
> I was unable to read any of the records.
>
> After investigation of why the format was corrupted I
> could only find a screen.brw which is not a browse
> format. I have since renamed the screen file and would
> suggest that users be carefull naming any screens brw
> as they will be listed with other browse formats.
>
> This seems to only affect filepro running under windows
> systems as other screen formats are named differently.
>
> Tony Ryder

Yes, this was amazing to find out. Tony found that a screen named "brw" can
be loaded as a browse (to very bad effect...:-)  It's not because other
screen formtats are named differently, but because the *unix browse formats
are named differently (and this can't happen on *unix). Strange that screens
on Windows/DoS are the only format not to have been *switched* around from
screen.x to x.scr or something like that. Probably because at the time
Widows/DOS filePro was created, screens only had the capability of being
named with one character? 0-9 or A-Z. At least, this must be the reasoning
for not having switched the screen along with all the other formats. When
named sc reens became possible, this liability happened.  Sound right to you
Ken? Or were screens always allowed to have more than one character? My
brain is fuzzy on this. :-)

John

* By switched around, I mean... on *unix we have: prc.blah, out.blah,
sel.blah brw.blah, and screen.blah, on Windows we have blah.prc, blah,out,
blah.sel, blah.brw and screen.brw.... hence the problem.  I've wracked my
brain and I can't see any other collisions. So, simplest work-around is to
never call a screen on Windows "brw". (Doctor, it hurst when I do this...
don't do that.)