For those of you who have missed out on my odyssey I am currently converting all of my file / database processing programs to c++ and moving all of my systems to Linux. Well, 99% of them to Linux. I still have to keep a couple Windows boxes to run my mailing & printing programs.
Today's problem: All of my text processing programs split the customers text files into several other text files. Some are converted into dBase, some are converted into tab delimited files, and some are imported directly into my mailing software. These various files are then sometimes merged into other files, etc... processed again, and then portions of them put back together and prepared for printing. Every record in each parent file is given a unique key upon initial import to identify itself throughout the process. My printing programs put all of this info back together using this key, much like a relational database. The way that I have done this in VB is to have the unique key consist of the date and time that the record is processed, a sequential record number for that file, and a unique hex record identifier that is pulled from the Windows registry, incremented, and then put back. So, a record id may look like 11152005-1348-000001-3BA144. (Without the dashes.) My question is this: What would be the best way on a Linux system to keep track of this unique key identifier? Or is there a better way to accomplish this task? I chose to write it to the Windows registry with VB so it wouldn't get deleted from the disk, it was not easily tampered with by users of the program, and really, it was just one less file that I had to keep up with. Having the key off by even one record could potentially catastrophic. I keep these files forever and I process and print around 1 million statements per month. Thanks again for the help! Best Regards, Mark. -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
