You need to add 2 bytes per record for the RLI (record length 
indicator), so:

build foo rec--80,16,v,ascii

will give a blocksize of 82x16=1312 bytes.

And the largest record you could have is 1310 bytes (plus 2 bytes for 
the RLI).


On 2018-08-05 1:51 AM, sieler_allegro wrote:
>> On Aug 3, 2018, at 5:48 AM, John Sommer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> All,
>>
>>
>> Is the HP3000 capable of creating a true variable length file?
>>
>>
>> I can tell it to create a Variable ASCII (VA) or Variable Binary (VB) file,
>> but it still seems to allocate space for the max record length.
>>
> Yes.
>
> The blocksize it allocates is (IIRC) based on the record size times the block factor.
>
> Oddly, you can sometimes get more records in a "block" than the block factor would imply.
> For example:
>
>     build foo; rec=-80,16,v,ascii
>
>     :fcopy from=; to = foo
>     (return)
>      a
>     b
>     c
>     d
>     ...
>     z
>     1
>     ...
>     9
>
> all 35 of those records will fit in the first block of the file.
>
> Conversely, you can get a single record of about 1280 characters written to the file
> (because the true max record size is the specified record size times the block factor).
>
> However, the real question might be: why do you ask?
>
> Stan
>    
> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>

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