Re: Help With File Size Limitations - Large Flat Files

On Wed, 4 Jan 1995, Cory Sandahl wrote:

> The problem I am having is that MS Access only allows a record size of
> up to 2k and when I try to import the flat ASCII file from the palmtop
> with records exceeding this file size limit, I get a Field Set Failure
> error message and the entire contents of that particular record is
> dropped from the import.

Seems to me you can either split the flat file into multiple flat files as necessary to and in a way to make you later import into your multiple tables easier

                             O R

you can write an intelligent append routine that reads the flat file in digestible chunks and portions the pieces out as necessary.

Not knowing Access, i haven't a clue if it is possible to write the latter (Clipper for example could be forced to read the file a byte at a time if neccessary) so I will simply opine that the former method is the easiest. A brute force method would be to use an editor but that is really labor intensive. PERL would work or a short basic program. REXX is made for this kind of thing and there is always C. Ummm...any chance you could rework your input program to handle the split for you? I bet you only need to split the file in half vertically to take care of the problem. Maybe your input routine could put everything up to the first comment set in one file and all the comments in another. Add a 3-6 character field at the beginning of each record in the two files as a key field to avoid later out-of-sync errors if you need that level of reliability.

Free comments probably worth what they cost you.

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