ISAMCVT Btrieve Specfiles Cannot Have Spaces; Must Use Commas (69343)

SUMMARY

Page 148 of the "Microsoft Visual Basic for MS-DOS: Professional Edition Features" manual gives an incorrect example of a Btrieve specfile. The fields of each entry are incorrectly shown separated by spaces; instead, the fields should be separated by commas. This documentation error also exists on Page 392 of the "Microsoft Basic 7.0: Programmer's Guide" for Basic PDS for MS-DOS, versions 7.0 and 7.1.

ISAMCVT specfiles must not contain spaces.

MORE INFORMATION

The specfile on Page 148 and Page 392 should be changed to the following:

string,4,StringCol
integer,2,IntColumn
Long,10,LongColumn
Double,5,DoubleCol

If ISAMCVT is run with this specfile and an appropriate Btrieve file, the Btrieve file will be successfully converted. Note that the specfile must specify the format for every column in the Btrieve file (for both indexes and non-indexes).

Page 148 and 392 include the following incorrect example of a Btrieve specfile:

string 4 StringCol
integer 2 IntColumn
Long 10 LongColumn
Double 5 DoubleCol

ISAMCVT gives the following error message when using the above specfile:

   ISAMCVT: Invalid data type 'string 4 StringCol
   ' In line 1 of <specfilename>.

ISAMCVT does not allow spaces as field separators. It is also illegal to mix commas and spaces as in the next example:

   string, 4, StringCol
   integer, 2, IntColumn
   Long, 10, LongColumn
   Double, 5, DoubleCol

ISAMCVT gives the following error message when using the above specfile:

ISAMCVT: Missing or invalid column name in line 1 of <specfilename>

The fields of an ISAMCVT specfile must be separated by commas and no spaces should be in the file.