RE: Re: addy book entries..

OTOH, the program specification could include, or change to include, use of ASCII data files. The nice thing about not using a database when you data is just ASCII, is that you can read it, edit it, port it, etc., without needing to change your program. That is, the users of the program have access to their data. As this is something to be stored in ~, it seems better to use ASCII. Browsing my own ~/.* files, this seems to be pretty standardized.

Paris Sinclair    |    4a75737420416e6f74686572
pariss@efn.org    |    205065726c204861636b6572
I wear my Geek Code on my finger.

Comment on RE: Re: addy book entries..

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RE: RE: Re: addy book entries.. by eduardo (Curate) on Jul 17, 2000 at 01:19 UTC
very very very true... i am a BIG fan of ascii files for configuration information... however, data files, i like making it difficult for people to edit them by hand... i have discovered that if you make datafiles easy to edit by hand, the "users" will most likely hurt the file format and cause your program to die... (i remember once someone edited a datafile by hand, and it caused a race condition that brought down a Sun E450... that was painful...) so, i guess, once again, the point becomes: "what are they asking you to do, what will they ask you to do? use the right tool for the right job."	[reply]

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RE: RE: Re: addy book entries..
by eduardo (Curate) on Jul 17, 2000 at 01:19 UTC

very very very true... i am a BIG fan of ascii files for configuration information... however, data files, i like making it difficult for people to edit them by hand... i have discovered that if you make datafiles easy to edit by hand, the "users" will most likely hurt the file format and cause your program to die... (i remember once someone edited a datafile by hand, and it caused a race condition that brought down a Sun E450... that was painful...) so, i guess, once again, the point becomes: "what are they asking you to do, what will they ask you to do? use the right tool for the right job."

[reply]