Possible new ZXp features

[Andy Rea]

Thats a neat idea Paul maybe a bit too elaborate for some, i always found the single *.bak was sufficient on the spectrum +3

Regards Andy

[Paul]

Thats a neat idea Paul

That's quite similar how microVAX did it about 35 years ago

[sirmorris]

What about a flag to force the save?

SAVE "MYACEPRG;F" ??

Or, going the route of the CAT command;

SAVE "+MYACEPRG" ???

[Andy Rea]

I'm unsure... My reasoning is this :- as it stands if you try to save for example a block of data and the file name already exists from within a running program, you get no warning that the save did not actually take place, if on the other hand you write your program to include the overwrite flag then you run the risk of accidentally overwriting something.

So ideally, either an auto backup,

OR

a way of determining if a given file already exists, to which then the user can elect to supply a new name, or overwrite.

Andy

[1024MAK]

I'm unsure... My reasoning is this :- as it stands if you try to save for example a block of data and the file name already exists from within a running program, you get no warning that the save did not actually take place, if on the other hand you write your program to include the overwrite flag then you run the risk of accidentally overwriting something.
So ideally, either an auto backup,
OR
a way of determining if a given file already exists, to which then the user can elect to supply a new name, or overwrite.
Andy

Unless you can find a simple(ish) way of telling the BASIC program about either
(a) if a file with a specified filename exists (like "EXIST" on some other filesystems)
or (b) a failed SAVE (where the SAVE operation did not complete, say due to the filename already existing) being error trapped,
then the best method is Paul's:

Or instead of .bak you could add numbers like .1 and .2 this way all old versions would be kept. Delete could then rename the file with the highest number to .p and you have the last version again.

Maybe using .K01 .K02 .K03 or something similar.

Mark

[RWAP]

Another suggestion which came up yesterday was to change the autoboot, so that it autoboots to a different file on the ZX80 and ZX81 - maybe use a .o file for the ZX80 and .p for the ZX81

[sirmorris]

The ZX80 ROM hasn't got a working autoboot facility as yet, but when it does the default extension for the '80 is automatically O so it will work like that.

C