Unlocking RANDOM file records

[Bern Ertl]

I've been working on an app which occasionally locks individual records
of a file opened as RANDOM. I was just testing the use of UNLOCK #Dev%
to unlock all the records that were locked individually. I noticed that
it didn't matter if I unlocked them at all. Upon closing the file, the
records were unlocked. Is it necessary to execute the UNLOCK statement?



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Bernard Ertl

[Lance Edmonds]

Typically, a locked file be unlocked when the file is closed, but it is "best practice" to explicitly unlock everything you lock.

Problems are rare on local drives, but file locking/unlocking across a network may be more prone to problems since there are additional factor beyond the control of your app. For example, if you are locking records on a peer server running some obscure networking software, then you could find that the the individual records are still locked even though you unlocked the file as a whole (IOW, some O/S's may not react as you may anticipate).

Therefore, my advice is this: if you locked individual records, then I'd suggest unlocking the same records individually. Only unlock the whole file if you actually locked the whole file.


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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Bern Ertl]

OK. Thanks for the clarification Lance.



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Bernard Ertl