GeoffB17
Veteran Member
I seem to remember from long ago that one of the old BASIC systems (original MS BASIC ?) had a supposed 'quirk' that was potentially useful.
If you create a Random file, and immed add, say, record 100 as a valid record, and then close the file, you in effect preserve all the garbage that might be in records 1 to 99. The BASIC code on creating the file/adding the record does NOT clear the data there. Later systems seem to do the latter by default?
I seem to remember that I did have the version of BASIC that did this, and this did work. Other versions just gave a file full of nothing, even if the disk SHOULD have had something there.
Does anyone know anything about this, or am I just imaging this?
Geoff
If you create a Random file, and immed add, say, record 100 as a valid record, and then close the file, you in effect preserve all the garbage that might be in records 1 to 99. The BASIC code on creating the file/adding the record does NOT clear the data there. Later systems seem to do the latter by default?
I seem to remember that I did have the version of BASIC that did this, and this did work. Other versions just gave a file full of nothing, even if the disk SHOULD have had something there.
Does anyone know anything about this, or am I just imaging this?
Geoff