Revision history for Perl extension XBase and DBD::XBase. 1.03 Sun Mar 6 07:32:21 CET 2011 Fixing output of tests when DBI is not available. 1.02 Thu Mar 3 20:40:54 CET 2011 Added the URL to the AVAILABLE FROM sections. 1.01 Wed Feb 9 21:22:07 CET 2011 Updated the Changes file. 1.00 Wed Feb 9 21:19:35 CET 2011 Changed the location of the distribution to http://www.adelton.com/perl/DBD-XBase/ Changed author's email address. Require perl 5.10 and use O_BINARY from Fcntl. Updated the clean target to make distclean clean. Updated URL of Erik's documentation. 0.241 Thu Nov 20 21:12:56 MET 2003 XBase: codepage option to XBase->create added, suggested by Chris Greenhill. 0.240 Mon Aug 25 15:03:57 MEST 2003 XBase: delete_record/undelete_record now corrctly returns false when the delete fails, problem reported by Boris Kocak. 0.234 Mon Jul 7 20:41:14 CEST 2003 Added test to Makefile.PL and note to INSTALL about case insensitive clash with Xbase.pm, suggested by Michael Higgins and Jan from AS. Added documentation / comments about datetime, suggested by John Freed. Xbase: Added the recompute_lastrecno parameter, suggested by Kevin J. Rice. Added EOF to create, suggested by Ilya Sandler. 0.232 Thu Apr 3 17:47:39 CEST 2003 XBase::SQL: Fieldname can contain the table name (silently dropped), suggested by Michael Semich, and table name now matches [^\(\s]+ to allow paren immediately following it, problem reported by belg4mit. 0.231 Thu Oct 31 17:48:19 MET 2002 t/9_dbd_create.t: patched a test failure on Windows platform, path by Yves Orton. 0.230 Wed Oct 9 11:05:28 MET DST 2002 DBD::XBase: added docs about xbase_ignorememo. DBD::XBase: fixed dropping table so that the driver forgets the table, patch by Mike P. Mikhailov. 0.220 Mon Sep 2 12:26:34 MET DST 2002 XBase::Index::ntx: type option has higher priority than dbf. XBase::read_header: fail if the header is not valid. XBase::Memo::read_header: allow length 512 and 24. XBase::FAQ: reformatted, slightly. XBase, XBase::SQL: added support for type money (Y). Code and indentation cleanup. 0.210 Fri Dec 7 12:56:37 MET 2001 README and INSTALL made uptodate. Fixed attributes (TYPE) handling, problem reported by Jacek Ciolek. 0.200 Sun Aug 19 13:48:27 MET DST 2001 Source code reformated to unified indentation. 0.190 Sat Aug 18 18:02:04 MEST 2001 XBase::SDBM: documentation added. DBD::XBase: order by with more fields supported. 0.177 Thu May 10 17:19:07 MET DST 2001 XBase: retry with nolongchars if the char lengths do not match the record length. Memo field not written when empty, suggested by Sascha Knific. XBase::Base::open: now allows option 'fh' to point to IO::Scalar or generally any filehandle to be passed in. 0.176 Thu Feb 8 13:19:16 MET 2001 DBD::XBase: select * with order by was failing, reported by Filipe Luis Geschaeft 0.173 Tue Feb 6 11:18:46 MET 2001 XBase: year encoding not correct in dbf header, reported by Helmut Jarausch. 0.172 Tue Feb 6 10:22:11 MET 2001 XBase::Memo: creating of fpt supported; bug pointed out by Massimo Matteuzzi. 0.170 Fri Jan 26 18:35:01 MET 2001 XBase::idx: create support and better reading support. XBase: password protection explored 0.165 Mon Jan 22 19:33:01 MET 2001 XBase: better sanity checks in dump_records. XBase::SQL: added support for not in SQL command. 0.162 Sun Jan 21 17:53:05 MET 2001 XBase::IndexCursor: error by one in last_fetched. XBase: Y2K problem fixed, patch by Phillip Millman. XBase::Index, XBase::SDBM: added support for SDBM index files. XBase, XBase::cdx: added support for type specification of cdx files even when called via prepare_select_with_index, to allow use even if we don't support expressions. XBase::SQL: multiplication support added, patch by Thoren Johne and Stuart Lemmen. 0.161 Sat May 20 12:52:35 MET DST 2000 indexdump: had bug in option handling. XBase::Index: minor tweaks, bug reporting fixed, support for cdx dates added, reported by Dan Albertsson. XBase: long numeric values weren't truncated correctly, reported by Dan Albertsson. 0.160 Sat Feb 12 20:03:56 MET 2000 XBase::Index: cdx now supports the delete, insert and write_header methods for updating the index file. Handling of negative integers fixed, as well as trailing nulls. XBase: preliminary support for attach_index. Code for making the module happy with _NULLFLAGS/0 type (we do not interpret this at the moment, we just correctly ignore) provided by Sebastien Nameche. XBase::SQL: like operator now matches multiline strings as well, problem reported by Petr Nalevka. DBD::XBase: stump DBD::XBase::db::DESTROY added, to silence DBI, patch by Gregory McCann. 0.1551 Sat Jan 9 19:21:16 CET 2000 dbfdump: Accepts --SQL modifier to --info, prints structure of the table as a create table SQL. 0.155 Sun Nov 7 15:43:59 CET 1999 XBase::SQL and DBD::XBase: arbitraty arithmetic expression possible in the select list. NAME attribute works fine for them. SQL functions length, *trim, concat and substr supported. Fixed bug in XBase::SQL causing bad division results. The DBD::XBase documentation revised. t/5_dbd_select* tests extended. 0.147 Mon Aug 16 10:48:37 MET DST 1999 XBase::SQL and DBD::XBase: fixed broken handling of NAME attribute, introduced in 0.145 by an attempt to support arbitrary expressions in the selected part. So I rolled back that change and it's (again) only possible to select * or select list of field names -- problem reported by adelton, William McKee and Martin Treusch. XBase::Index: fixed handling of indexes with 32-bit record number -- patch by Jon Bloom. XBase::Base: fixed typo _unlockex, pointed by Mike Sanders. 0.145 Mon Jun 21 12:49:19 MET DST 1999 DBD::XBase: updated TYPE_INFO for BOOLEAN and BLOB. t/5_dbd_select.t: added tests for the named bind params. 0.144 Fri May 14 07:50:23 CEST 1999 XBase::SQL, DBD::XBase: added support for named bind parameters; added comments. 0.141 Thu Apr 29 23:17:25 CEST 1999 XBase::Index: added code for multiple page cdx and fix for big endian. Added code for negative ntx numeric values. 0.140 Thu Apr 29 10:50:58 MET DST 1999 XBase: the -1 memo records handle the 4 byte fields as well, patch by Zbigniew Malinowski. XBase::Index: support for cdx files improved (numeric fields), subindexes. XBase::SQL: code properly commented. DBD::XBase: added the time type, aptch by Nikolai Saoukh. 0.132 Sun Apr 18 17:35:10 MET DST 1999 XBase::Base: dealing of openoptions fixed, problem spotted by Zbigniew Malinowski. XBase::SQL: added type numeric, patch by Nikolai Saoukh. XBase::Index: added support for cdx (one page index so far), added support for idx (untested). DBD::XBase: added attributes PRECISION and SCALE, changed SQL type for NUMERIC, patch by Nikolai Saoukh. driver_characteristics now includes Tim's additions of Apr 4, 1999. Created new XBase::FAQ.pod. 0.131 Sun Apr 18 8:47:12 MET DST 1999 XBase: memo records marked -1 are returned empty now, spotted by Zbigniew Malinowski. XBase::SQL: added possibility to have expression to the left from the relational operator, suggested by Nikolai Saoukh. DBD::XBase: fixed type_info to return array, bug spotted by Alan Grover. 0.130 Sat Feb 27 18:09:04 MET 1999 DBD::XBase: fixed handling of the rows method. Added driver_characteristics.pod to list characteristics of DBD::XBase according to the draft by Tim Bunce. 0.129 Fri Feb 26 22:02:12 MET 1999 XBase.pm: added support for datetime fields T, testing data provided by William McKee. Fix for ignorememo. XBase::SQL: added time and datetime names to the SQL parser. XBase::Memo and XBase.pm: added support for Apollo SMT memo files, code based on that provided by Dirk Tostmann. O_BINARY is only loaded on evil systems now. 0.127 Mon Feb 22 10:56:23 MET 1999 XBase::Base: opening readonly files fixed, patch by Petr Machacek. _unlockex fixed to _unlock. locksh, lockex and unlock now return true/false based on result. DBD::XBase::disconnect now closes the tables, patch by Martin Treusch von Buttlar. Fixed typo in delete code. t/2_write.t: added $table->close before size check, patch by Ilya Chelpanov. 0.121 Thu Jan 21 20:07:04 MET 1999 XBase::Memo: fixed a typo in measuring the next_for_append, pointed out by Dan Albertsson. t/2_write.t: added afox5.dbf/FPT and a Fox* test. 0.120 Wed Jan 13 13:24:15 MET 1999 XBase.pm: added XBase::Cursor::rewind, names, prepare_select_nf. Added readonly option. Added option 'table' for dump -- using Data::ShowTable. XBase.pm, XBase::Base.pm: open method now accepts hash of options. XBase::Memo: we now reset next_for_append to point behind the end of the file, problem pointed out by Artem Belevich. dbfdump: option --table, --fields now handles intervals. t/2_read.t: fixed problem with order of fields in hash, patch by Andreas J. Koenig. t/4_dbfdump.t: added quotes for Win* systems, patch by Randy Kobes. 0.115 Wed Jan 6 17:02:28 MET 1999 XBase::Memo: tries to find out which format (\x1a versus \x1a\x1a) to use for dBaseIII memo files. It also writes back this separator. 0.110 Sun Dec 20 21:29:05 MET 1998 XBase::SQL: added LIKE clause to WHERE part of SQL commands. 0.105 Sun Dec 20 17:09:43 MET 1998 XBase::Base: added workaround for systems that not only write to files something else than they are told to, but also damage the files by merely opening it. XBase::Memo: fixed problem with fpt files -- thanks to Dan Albertsson for providing many test files. XBase::SQL: fix of handling of double quoted strings. dbfdump: memosep and memofile options fixed. t/4_dbfdump.t: avoided using cat. t/*_dbd_*.t: forcing use of DBI version at least 1.0. 0.100 Mon Dec 7 11:00:23 MET 1998 DBD::XBase: capitalized AND/OR in SQL commands now work, method rows implemented, reported by cybertoast. Updated to use _set_fbav. Unpolished support to *info* methods. XBase::SQL: fixed the primary key/key parsing problem, patch by Bill Brinkley & Joe Johnston. A quick fix to avoid bug in Perl with long blobs. XBase::Memo: fixed appending record to dBaseIV memo used to corrupt the data -- reported by Dan Albertsson. 0.0696 Mon Oct 26 11:57:01 MET 1998 DBD::XBase: added bug reporting by INSERT command and fixed example in man page, spotted by Dmitry Dorofeev. Added DESC part of ORDER BY clause, requested by Dmitry Dorofeev. Fixed number of fields returned with ORDER BY clause, patch by Paul Lindner. If the directory is not specified in call to connect, it now defaults to current directory, not to root. Fixed the fetch method -- it doesn't deadlock anymore, problem reported by Ken Yamaguchi. XBase::Index: added some MDX code. XBase::Memo: header_len is now set to block_size, not 512, patch by Fergus Lee. XBase.pm: The type B is Fox double, not memo, spotted by George F. Frazier. Added support for Fox* 4 byte memo fields, data provided by William McKee. All of the reads/tells rewritten to allow stream-lined processing, suggested by Sergey Lukashevich. Use with caution, however. Added autoflush to each opened file, so it's safe to read the table with other process before closing the table in the first one, spotted by Thomas Hahn. 0.0694 Tue Aug 25 23:24:35 MET DST 1998 XBase::Memo: Fixed error by 8 in dBaseIV reading/writing code, bug reported by Kendal Van Dyke. t/5_dbd_select.t changed to be non-unique-key in sort independent, reported by Larry W. Virden. 0.0693 Tue Aug 25 10:25:20 MET DST 1998 DBD::XBase: Fixed handling ORDER BY with WHERE clauses, reported by Kendal Van Dyke. XBase: added nolongchars -- omitted from 0.068. XBase::Index: added ro support for Clipper's ntx, the whole module reworked. Thanks to Frans van Loon for providing example ntx files and code that helped me to understand the format. Also thanks to Robert Geer for his C code that also helps me to check the expected results. XBase::Base: last_record can be -1, meaning unknown -- disables checks. Added t/3_ntx.t and added ORDER BY test to t/5_dbd_select.t. Some documentation improvements. 0.068 Thu Aug 20 18:43:17 MET DST 1998 DBD::XBase: added support for ORDER BY, defined using substh. Fixed error by 1 in deleting all records. Added support for NULLABLE, NUM_OF_PARAMS and TYPE in FETCH. Defined data_sources to dbi:XBase:.; disconnect_all returns 1; defined tables, disconnect and DESTROY; quote adds support for NULL. XBase: create now marks presence of a dbt file in dbf. Added attribute nolongchars to disable character fields longer than 255. Erik Bachmann's homepage moved. XBase::Memo: added suport for memosep attribute, default \x1a\x1a. Correct header is now written for dBaseIV memo files. Fix of handling dBaseIV memo records, patch by Barry Fishman. XBase::SQL: added ORDER BY support, recognizes VARCHAR. In dbit/40blobs.t we only try blob size 64 -- fix for bug in Perl regexp engine. Change in dbit/40bindparam.t, quick fix for missing NULL chars. In dbit/50chopblanks.t swapped $$ref[1] and $name. 0.065 Sun Jun 7 15:18:57 MET DST 1998 Added table specific ChopBlanks. Added fetch_hashref to XBase::Cursor. Docs updated. 0.064 Sun May 31 18:56:26 MET DST 1998 (*****) Major rewrite of the DBD and SQL part. New features: support for bind parameters in where, insert and update. Support for NULL and IS NULL tests. The XBase::SQL is faster and hopefully clearer. The DBD::XBase supports (among others) bind_col. The DBD driver now passes 98.39 % of the standard DBD tests. Added support for data type 'I' for Fox* into XBase.pm. 0.0632 Wed May 27 12:27:04 MET DST 1998 Added --nomemo option to dbfdump. The list of entires is made longer in any non-leaf page in ndx. Added check for the magic "FFFF0800" tag in dBaseIV dbt file when reading it. 0.0631 Fri May 22 22:24:02 CEST 1998 Fixed handling big endian in numeric fields in ndx, fixe problem with key/record length. 0.063 Sun May 17 21:46:08 CEST 1998 Added first support for ndx index files. From XBase module it's available using prepare_select_with_index. It's very alpha but it seems to handle character and numeric (not date yet) types. And yes, it's read only. Added FETCH('NAME') and _ListTables to DBD::XBase, added drop table, integer type and dummy not null to XBase::SQL. The generic DBI test suite now goes well up until bind params, put on ToDo list. 0.062 Thu May 14 15:11:32 MET DST 1998 Field and table names in XBase::SQL now accept digits and underscores, in XBase::Memo, we check for ($dbf_version & 15), patches by Jens Quade. Fixed handling of Fox* fpt files and a problem with memo files that have record length different than 512, patches by Thomas Grueter. 0.061 Tue Apr 7 21:52:07 MET DST 1998 Fixed writing undefined values in numeric fields. Fixed dealing with uppercase extensions. XBase::SQL fixed to support int, found by Chris Winters. Offset in the record headers in dbf now set properly, patch by Dave Frascone. Added ignorememo option to new XBase call. Use this if you have a memo field in dbt but do not have the memo file. Otherwise you will get an error, request by Martin Jost. Other fixes by Martin Jost included. 0.060 Fri Mar 20 10:20:45 MET 1998 Added method prepare_select and XBase::Cursor to implement long selects. Method dump_records now prints directly, doesn't use get_all_records. Added parameter --info into the script dbfdump to print the header info. Changed way of determining the type of the dbt file after discussion with Sergey Lukashevich. 0.0599 Wed Mar 11 22:58:45 MET 1998 Option to specify the memo file in call to XBase::new added. Dump_records made customizable. 0.0598 Tue Mar 10 22:40:00 MET 1998 Fixed bug when finding a name for the memo file in XBase; in dBaseIII memo field we will only check for one \x1a to allow as many formats possible, we still write two of them; typo in init_memo fixed -- patches by Martin Jost. 0.0597 Tue Mar 3 23:40:56 MET 1998 (*****) Major code revision and check: Error handling fixed, locking added. Rewritten process_* to rproc and wproc arrays. Added read_all_records. Minor typos and bugs fixed. Test suite extended. 0.0584 Mon Mar 2 10:04:00 MET 1998 Fix of XBase::Memo::dBaseIV::read_record for memo fields longer than record length by Jochen Friedrich. 0.0583 Thu Feb 12 00:08:07 MET 1998 Bug fix for floating fields, patch by Carlos Augusto de Almeida. 0.058 Mon Feb 9 19:15:03 MET 1998 (*****) XBase::SQL rewritten, DBD::XBase now supports select, delete, insert, update and create table. Documentation for DBD::XBase extended. DBD::XBase is still alpha but rather stable. Added support for fpt memo files. Fixed bug with dBase IV memo files, the block length is stored somewhere else, patch by James LewisMoss. Fixed bug with field names in newer dbf files, terminated by zero byte, patch by Petr Olsak. Added binmode for the OSes that write to disk something else that they are told to, reported by Robert Bauer. Removed the test that caused read to fail on read-only files, reported by Stewart Russell. The error handling reviewed, most of the error messages are now local to the object ($table->errstr()). 0.039 Wed Dec 17 19:53:49 MET 1997 (*****) DBD::XBase supports select where and delete where. 0.0352 Mon Dec 15 11:29:46 MET 1997 Fixed bug with long memo fields, reported by Tejinderpal Singh. 0.0345 Mon Dec 8 13:02:46 MET 1997 Fixed bug with "\0" at the end of field names in header, spotted by Roberto Congiu. 0.0343 Thu Dec 4 10:52:41 MET 1997 Column names are converted to uppercase. SQL parsing moved to XBase::SQL module. Added require XBase::Memo when creating new Memo file. Added test for create and drop. 0.0342 Fri Nov 28 18:30:31 MET 1997 Fixed bug when creating new file, spotted by Roberto Congiu. $XBase::errstr depreciated, using XBase->errstr instead. Minor changes in the documentation. 0.03301 Thu Nov 20 17:32:53 MET 1997 Handling null numeric fields (John D Groenveld). Changed "look for error" test in header.t to be OS portable. Fixed bug in decode_version_info (dbtflag). Fixed bug with field length in XBase::create, spotted by Risto Wichman. 0.032 Thu Nov 6 16:27:10 MET 1997 Fixed bugs: test on "\r" in read_header; check of record number in delete and undelete (spotted by Frans van Loon). Added methods field_lengths and field_decimals and changed *_on_read in [NF] section (spotted by John D Groenveld). 0.031 Thu Oct 30 19:47:37 MET 1997 Fixed bug in docs about write_record. Changed format of get_field_info to include field number. Fixed bug with decimals. 0.03 Mon Oct 27 23:23:17 MET 1997 (*****) Minor bug fixes. XBase::create added. Tests extended. Module released on CPAN. 0.029 Fri Oct 24 19:34:32 MET DST 1997 Bug fixes. Added methods for writing dbt files. The writing methods are now set_record, set_record_hash and update_record. 0.024 Mon Oct 20 22:17:44 MET DST 1997 The original release. Includes XBase that reads dbf and dbt and writes dbf (but not dbt). Put on CPAN mainly for other people to test and comment. --- Note: Versions tagged (*****) were major updates and code changes. I have been using the Xbase(3) module by Pratap Pereira for quite a time to read the dbf files, but it had no writing capabilities, it was not use strict clean and the author did not support the module behind the version 1.07. So I started to make my own patches and thought it would be nice if other people could make use of them. I thought about taking over the development of the original Xbase package, but the interface seemed rather complicated to me. So with the help of article XBase File Format Description by Erik Bachmann on URL http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/format/ formerly http://www.e-bachmann.dk/docs/xbase.htm I have written a new module. It doesn't use any code from Xbase-1.07 and you are free to use and distribute it under the same terms as Perl itself.