Package: dbview Version: 1.0.3-8 Followup-For: Bug #324466 Some info about the null byte:
;----------------------------------------------------------------------- dBASE III interface routines for C. Author Mark Sadler June 19, 1987 [...] One slight difference occurs between files created by dBASE III and those created by dBASE III Plus. In the earlier files, there is an ASCII NUL character between the $0D end of header indicator and the start of the data. This NUL is no longer present in Plus, making a Plus header one byte smaller than an identically structured III file. The functions included here will work with either version of dBASE III and writes files which may be used by either. [...] ;----------------------------------------------------------------------- http://home.klebos.net/philip.sargent/matdat/tr162-ctdif.html ;----------------------------------------------------------------------- A Tabular Materials Data Interchange Format Philip M. Sargent Cambridge University Engineering Dept., CAMBRIDGE CB2 1PZ, U.K. CUED/C-MATS/TR.162 August 1989 [...] Header Format Byte Length Description [...] n+1 1 0Dh (ASCII 13, carriage return, "ctrl-M") header terminator character. n+2 1 00h (ASCII 0, NUL) in dBase III ONLY ! DOes not appear in III+ or IV. If the number of bytes in the header is p, then the number of fields q = (p - 33)/32. An extra byte (00h) appears between the 0Dh header terminator character and the delete flag of the first data record in dBase III files, but not in dBase III+ or dBase IV files. dBase III+ can cope with this and the current CTDIF-1 translator detects it. [Actually this field can be totally wrong and dBase III+ will still handle the data correctly. Thus it cannot be relied upon and any software reading .dbf files should be prepared to ignore it and count lengths, fields and data for itself.] [...] ;----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Juan Pedro. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
