DCOPY

NAME

dcopy - copy RMSfile

SYNOPSIS

dcopy inputfile outputfile

DESCRIPTION

Dcopy copies all records in the input RMSfile into an existing output RMSfile. Both inputfile and outputfile are RMSfiles. Dcopy only copies those fields that are common to both RMSfiles, i.e., fields that have identical names. All the fields in each output record that are not represented in the input record are set to zero. Dcopy converts data types and truncates or zero-fills character strings as necessary during the copy process. Data type conversion is performed by converting the old data type to a string and then converting the string to the new data type. Dcopy will attempt nonsense conversions, such as converting a MONEY value into a DATE, and the (probably incorrect) result will be stored in the output record.

The output RMSfile is not cleared before dcopy starts, so it may be used to merge two possibly dissimilar RMSfiles.

Dcopy copies each record one field at a time, so that the fields in the input file and in the output file need not be in any particular order. If a data field is an array, dcopy copies the array one element at a time observing the above rules. If there are a different number of array elements in the input and output RMSfiles, dcopy copies all the array elements that it can, and zeroes the rest.