Automatic and locking (was RE: -RO causes an error)

[Bob Stockler]

Top post (for those not interested in what I'm responding to) . . .

Way back when, in the deep, dark days of history, on the CompuServe
Forum, it took a lot of us old timers a lot of messages to convince
George Simon that it was "Not A Good Thing" under any circumstances
to do writes in Automatic Processing Tables.

We finally beat him down on the subject, and he quit doing that, and
the problems he was having mysteriously disappeared.

There may be exceptions, but I continue to believe that doing writes
from Automatic Processing Tables is a "Bad Idea", if not bad filePro
programming.

Bob

PS - Away back, when processing tables were limited to a lot fewer
     lines than they are allowed today, I had an input table that
     needed many more lines.  I used the automatic table essentially
     as one would use a CALL (or maybe more like a CHAIN) table today.

     But I never did writes from an automatic table, and never will.

PPS - I miss George Simon.  He was a good foil.  Anyone know where he
      is and what he's doing?

Ken Brody wrote (on Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 04:20:53PM -0400):

| Quoting John Esak (Fri, 3 Jun 2005 15:01:23 -0400):
| [...]
| > <beating a dead horse department>
| > Actually, it is not just bad form... it is bad programming, period. By
| > the time you are on the automatic table for _any_ reason... the record
| > is *unlocked*.
| 
| That's not quite true.  (The "for _any_ reason" part, that is.)
| 
| When entering update mode, automatic will be run _after_ the record
| has been locked.
| 
| Also, during the output phase of *report, the record is locked when
| automatic is run.
| 
| > Therefore, doing any kind of assignment to a real field
| > *in-the-current-file*, with or without a WRITE statement... is just
| > plain bad programming and since the record is not locked, niether are
| > the indexes... and everything is just doubly wrong for "writing to the
| > curent record on the automatic table".
| 
| I took the original post to mean modifying lookup fields in the
| automatic processing, which is fine as far as filePro is concerned,
| as long as the the lookup is potected.  (Though it may be considered
| "bad form" by most people.)
| 
| > Writing to another file other than the current file while on an
| > automatic table is *bad form*. :-)
| >
| > John Esak
| >
| > </beating a dead horse department>
| 
| Shouldn't you close the tag _before_ your name?  :-)
| 
| --
| KenBrody at BestWeb dot net        spamtrap: <g8ymh8uf001 at sneakemail.com>
| http://www.hvcomputer.com
| http://www.fileProPlus.com
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-- 
Bob Stockler - bob at trebor.iglou.com
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