BCX File Management Functions

• APPEXENAME$ function
• APPEXEPATH$ function
• BCXPATH$ function
• BFF$ function
• CLOSE statement
• COMBOBOXLOADFILE statement
• COPYFILE statement
• EOF statement
• EXIST function
• FILELOCKED function
• FINDFIRST$ function
• FINDNEXT$ function
• FREEFILE function
• GETFILENAME$ function
• GETATTR statement
• KILL statement
• LCCPATH$ function
• LISTBOXLOADFILE statement
• LOADFILE$ function
• LOC function
• LOF function
• OPEN statement
• PELLESPATH$ function
• REC function
• RECCOUNT function
• RECORD function
• RECLEN statement
• RENAME statement
• REWIND statement
• SETATTR statement
• TEMPFILENAME$ function

FILELOCKED function

Purpose: FILELOCKED determines whether or not a file can be opened.

 RetVal% = FILELOCKED(FileName$)

$FILETEST ON | OFF directive

Purpose: The $FILETEST ON or $FILETEST OFF directives specify whether or not to suppress the automatic failure checking when using OPEN and CLOSE statements.

 $FILETEST ON or $FILETEST OFF

OPEN statement

Purpose: The OPEN statement opens a file, specifies a streaming mode, and associates a file handle name with the file.

 OPEN filename FOR StreamingMode AS FileHandleName

filename can be a literal or variable string containing the name of the file with an absolute or relative path.

StreamingMode arguments INPUT, OUTPUT, APPEND, BINARY and NEW are outlined individually below.

The FileHandleName is used to identify the file in subsequent procedure calls, parameter arguments and other circumstances. QBASIC syle file handle names using the #number syntax are not supported in BCX. File handle names usually are automatically typed as a FILE handle, however, a file handle name can be explicitly created as a FILE handle. See the File Handle Names section remarks below for details.

Opening Text Files

 OPEN FileName$ FOR INPUT AS hFile

 OPEN FileName$ FOR OUTPUT AS hFile

 OPEN FileName$ FOR APPEND AS hFile

Opening Binary Files

 OPEN FileName$ FOR BINARY AS hFile

 OPEN FileName$ FOR BINARY NEW AS hFile

 OPEN FileName$ FOR BINARY APPEND AS hFile

 OPEN FileName$ FOR BINARY INPUT AS hFile

 OPEN FileName$ FOR BINARY OUTPUT AS hFile

Remarks:

Every OPEN statement must be terminated, eventually, with a CLOSE statement. See the CLOSE page for details.

Expressions such as:

 OPEN EXTRACT$(filename$,".") & ".bas" FOR INPUT AS FP1

are valid.

Opening Random Access Files

 OPEN fName$ FOR BINARY [NEW] AS hFile RECLEN RecordSize

Remarks:

If RecordSize is a TYPE structure, RECLEN will calculate automatically the size of the TYPE structure.

If RecordSize is an INTEGER variable or a literal number, that integer must specify the fixed size of the random access record.

☞ If RecordSize is an INTEGER variable, it must be appended with % integer data type signifier.

RecordSize is calculated before the value is passed to RECLEN. The programmer is responsible for determining the fixed size of the record.

For more details see the Using Random Access Files.

File Handle Names

• A file handle name can be explicitly created as shown in this example.

  
   DIM MyFileHandle@ ' BCX Reserves @ for "C" FILE* data types
   OPEN "new.txt" FOR OUTPUT AS FP1
   MyFileHandle@ = FP1
   FPRINT MyFileHandle@, "This is a test"
   CLOSE FP1
  
  

  or, for example, like this

  
   GLOBAL DYNAMIC FHandles[12] AS FILE PTR
  
   LOCAL DYNAMIC FHandles[12] AS FILE PTR  
  
  

• When passing a file handle name to a SUB or FUNCTION use AS FILE as the data type specifier for the file handle name argument in the parameter list of the procedure as is done with "ABC" in the snippet below.

  
   OPEN "new.txt" FOR INPUT AS FP1
   PARSE$(FP1)
   CLOSE FP1
   
   FUNCTION PARSE$(ABC AS FILE)
     LOCAL Buffer$
     LINE INPUT ABC, Buffer$
     PRINT Buffer$
     FUNCTION = Buffer$
   END FUNCTION
  
  

• In the snippet below, the file handle name MyFP1 will be LOCAL in scope to the subroutine FileTest.

  
   SUB FileTest()
    DIM RAW MyFP1 AS FILE
    OPEN "test.txt" FOR BINARY AS MyFP1
    CLOSE MyFP1
   END SUB
  
  

OPEN printer

OPEN is also used to send data to a printer. OPEN will make a connection to the printer using a handle to "PRN", the standard printer communications device. The data then is output to the printer using a PRINT statement. Here is a simple example for sending data to the default printer.

 DIM i
 
 OPEN "PRN" FOR OUTPUT AS FP1
 
 FOR i = 1 TO 60
   PRINT FP1,"This is line number", i
 NEXT
 
 PRINT FP1, CHR$(12)   'CHR$(12) is Form Feed Character

 CLOSE FP1
 

BCX Console Sample Programs using OPEN function.

S10.bas S82.bas S103.bas S113.bas S115.bas