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Par2: Process ASCII file using DOS driver
1998-04-07 -- John Hickey

Originally, I used the ASCII driver and it was taking a long time to import 1000 records.
The problem was not the adding of the records, but the reading of the ASCII file!

I decided to use the DOS driver to read the ASCII file in big chunks, and
then parse it out.  I defined a DOS file (DOSFILE) with one field (LINE)
that was 20000 long.  I then used the following code to parse it out:

NN#=0
SET(DOSFILE,1)
LOOP
 Next(DOSFILE)               !Reads in 20000 characters
 IF ERROR() Then BREAK.
 LOOP                              !Begin Parse
   X#=instring('<13,10>',clip(DOS:Line),1,1)   !Looks for Carriage Return/Line Feed
   IF ~X#
       ASC:Line=DOS:Line     !If not found, it's a partial line
       nn#=1                           !set a flag and
       Break                            !read in next DOS Line
   Else
      If ~nn#                           !if not a partial line
        ASC:Line=''                  !re-set ASC:Line
      End
   End
   nn#=0                     !re-set partial line flag
   ASC:Line=clip(ASC:Line) & sub(DOS:Line,1,x#-1)  !This is the actual ASC record now
   DOS:Line=sub(DOS:Line,x#+2,20000)   !shortens the DOS line for next parse
   !
   !
   !
 END              !End Parse
END             !End DOS loop

I put this into a Processing Template and it works great.  If you do that,
you don't need the first five lines (or the last END); the processing
template takes care of that for you.  You only need the lines from "Begin
Parse" to "End Parse".

The increase in speed was quite dramatic!

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