Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!not-for-mail
From: Wilfried Rupflin <wr@irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: Accessing DATA-Files with BETA
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 15:03:37 +0100 (MET)
Organization: DAIMI, Computer Science Dept. at Aarhus University
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Message-ID: <199802261403.PAA01120@noatun.mjolner.dk>
Reply-To: Wilfried Rupflin <wr@irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
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>Hello everyone!
>
>I want to search a data file for a special string - the problem is that
>there are many characters which BETA's file.get cannot read. The
>algorithm works very well as I have tested with a simple text-file that
>contains the string that I want to search for.
>But within that data-file there are some characters which e.g.
>Microsoft's Wordpad can read, but Microsoft's Notepad does not - as
>BETA.
>
>So my question is: is there a possibility to read "unreadable"
>characters which might not be visualizable on the "normal" screen (but
>Wordpad can!) ?
>
>Kind regards
>
>Sascha Kimmel
>http://users.aol.com/trsoftware
>http://infinf.home.ml.org


Have a look at the definition of class file:

File: Stream (*)
  (#
     <<SLOT FileLib:Attributes>>;
     EntryDesc:< DiskEntry;
     Entry: @EntryDesc (*) ;
     name: @ (*) ...;
     Put::<  ...;
     Get::<  ...;
     ...
     Eos::<  ...;
     touch: entry.touch (*) ...;
     delete: (*) ...;
     binary:< booleanvalue
     (* THIS(File) is binary if value is true. On some systems a
      * non-binary (e.g. textual) file may behave differently, than
      * a binary file. A binary file is always treated as raw bytes,
      * whereas a non-binary file may treat some characters, notably
      * the end-of-line marker, differently.
      *) ;
     openRead: (*) ...;
     openWrite: (*) ...;
     openAppend: (*) ...;
     openReadWrite: (*) ...;
     openReadAppend: (*) ...;
     flush: (*) ...;
     close: (*) ...;
     ...
  #)

You may declare a binary file object like this e.g.:

(#
   f: @file (# binary:: (# do true->value #) #);
do ...
#)

Hope this helps.

	Wilfried Rupflin