-=[ In:100665.1141@compuserve was heard to say... ]=-

 >> On 28 Mar 1997 03:34:42 GMT, rickh...@aol.com (Rick Hall) wrote:
 >>
 >> >I am opening untyped files in pascal that are in excess of 10Mbytes and
 >> >at the moment I am copying them to a temp file rewriting the original
 >> >file and the copying them back....

 In> I've not seen the early part of this thread, but I wonder from what I
 In> have seen if opening the files as

 In> file of byte

 In> would give the user the ability to do what he wants to?

 In> chr and ord give you ways to turn bytes into characters and vice
 In> versa.

Actually, opening the file as an untyped file and using BlockRead/BlockWrite
would be the quickest, and the data in the file can be any type. The problem
with using a file of byte is that you have to read or write one byte at a
time, which is the slowest way of doing it. BlockRead/BlockWrite allow you
to specify how big a block to use, and are designed to handle early EOF
when the last block in the file is smaller than the buffer you're storing
it to.

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