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Brian Bartholomew (bb@wizard.pn.com)
Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:11:31 -0400 

Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:11:31 -0400
Message-Id: <199609080711.DAA01370@auntiem.pn.com>
From: Brian Bartholomew <bb@wizard.pn.com>
Subject: [mSQL] A few miscellaneous questions...

> I'm not sure I completly agree with the way mSQL handles strings that
> are longer than the maximum defined length.

Silent failure to store what you ask it to store is bad. Would you
use a filesystem that didn't complain when it filled up?

> This real number "bug" concerns me. If I insert a 2.5 into the
> database, sometimes it might print out as 2.50000000001.

This is the way floats work; the base-2 representation can't represent
base-10 numbers exactly. It has nothing to do with msql. If it
bothers you, use fixed-point integers.

> Are there any other programs out there, shareware or commercial, that
> process large ASCII data files?

ftp://rand.org/pub/RDB-hobbs has a set of perl scripts to manipulate
tab-seperated data in database-like ways. These programs will process
files as big as disk. Most of them hold only one row in memory, plus
some I/O buffering.

Another member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) lpf@uunet.uu.net
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Brian Bartholomew - bb@pn.com - Florida native but loving Boston
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