Is it possible to import dat files written in Turbo Pascal version 7

  • Thread starter Thread starter Clay
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Clay

I have an old Turbo Pascal version 7 application that
stores data in the form of dat files. This application
was originally written for MSDOS. I am now in the process
of creating an Access Database to replaced this older
application.

Does anyone know if it is possible and if it is how I
would go about importing the existing data into Access?
I'm hoping to find a utility that might make moving the
data over a little easier.

Any suggestions that you might have would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks!
 
No idea.
But if it is one of the common formats then Access can do it.
(txt, dbf, csv, xls, etc.)

If it is not a common format, then you need to export the data from the
proprietary format to a common one.
 
Hi Clay,

It's a long time since I've written data files in Turbo Pascal, but
these are likely to be in a fairly simple format, perhaps fixed-width
records consisting of a mix of fixed width text fields and binary
numeric fields. Viewing them in a text editor will show reveal what's
going on (or do you have the source code of the TP application?).

If so, the unpack() function in Perl is designed for the job. It takes a
record as a string and uses a template you supply to parse it into
fields which you can then write to a textfile that Access can import.




I have an old Turbo Pascal version 7 application that
stores data in the form of dat files. This application
was originally written for MSDOS. I am now in the process
of creating an Access Database to replaced this older
application.

Does anyone know if it is possible and if it is how I
would go about importing the existing data into Access?
I'm hoping to find a utility that might make moving the
data over a little easier.

Any suggestions that you might have would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

Please respond in the newgroup and not by email.
 
Joe,
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, unfortunately the application
that I'm working with doesn't have an export function
built in. The data is stored in two files; one is a *.dat
file and the other is a *.ndx file. These two file are
somehow used together when extracting the data.
 
If I had to guess from the file extension, I'd say those are indexes for
your data. If that's the case, once you import them into Access, Access will
take care of the indexing for you.

--
Doug Steele, Microsoft Access MVP



Clay said:
John,

Thanks for the reply! The suggestions that you provided
were very helpful. The data is stored in two files; one
is a *.dat file and the other is a *.ndx file. These two
file are somehow used together when extracting the data.

When I open the *.dat files with Word; I can view what
appears to be data records for each company. I should be
able to save this file in text format for import to Access
at a later date.

However, when I open the *.ndx files in Word; I see a
series of number and special characters. I'm assuming
that these are either record numbers or some sort of field
identifiers. Do you think that I will need this
information later in the data transfer?

Thanks again
Clay
-----Original Message-----
Hi Clay,

It's a long time since I've written data files in Turbo Pascal, but
these are likely to be in a fairly simple format, perhaps fixed-width
records consisting of a mix of fixed width text fields and binary
numeric fields. Viewing them in a text editor will show reveal what's
going on (or do you have the source code of the TP application?).

If so, the unpack() function in Perl is designed for the job. It takes a
record as a string and uses a template you supply to parse it into
fields which you can then write to a textfile that Access can import.




I have an old Turbo Pascal version 7 application that
stores data in the form of dat files. This application
was originally written for MSDOS. I am now in the process
of creating an Access Database to replaced this older
application.

Does anyone know if it is possible and if it is how I
would go about importing the existing data into Access?
I'm hoping to find a utility that might make moving the
data over a little easier.

Any suggestions that you might have would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

Please respond in the newgroup and not by email.
.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Clay,

it sounds like your looking at an index file. (Similar to
old Dbase/Foxbase ones .NTX / .NDX) The numbers are
record numbers. Usually index files are temporary and may
be deleted. As long asd you have the data, you can
sort/index at leasure once imported into access...
-----Original Message-----
John,

Thanks for the reply! The suggestions that you provided
were very helpful. The data is stored in two files; one
is a *.dat file and the other is a *.ndx file. These two
file are somehow used together when extracting the data.

When I open the *.dat files with Word; I can view what
appears to be data records for each company. I should be
able to save this file in text format for import to Access
at a later date.

However, when I open the *.ndx files in Word; I see a
series of number and special characters. I'm assuming
that these are either record numbers or some sort of field
identifiers. Do you think that I will need this
information later in the data transfer?

Thanks again
Clay
-----Original Message-----
Hi Clay,

It's a long time since I've written data files in Turbo Pascal, but
these are likely to be in a fairly simple format,
Click to expand...
perhaps
fixed-width
records consisting of a mix of fixed width text fields and binary
numeric fields. Viewing them in a text editor will show reveal what's
going on (or do you have the source code of the TP application?).

If so, the unpack() function in Perl is designed for the job. It takes a
record as a string and uses a template you supply to parse it into
fields which you can then write to a textfile that
Click to expand...
Access
can import.
I have an old Turbo Pascal version 7 application that
stores data in the form of dat files. This application
was originally written for MSDOS. I am now in the process
of creating an Access Database to replaced this older
application.

Does anyone know if it is possible and if it is how I
would go about importing the existing data into Access?
I'm hoping to find a utility that might make moving the
data over a little easier.

Any suggestions that you might have would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

Please respond in the newgroup and not by email.
.
Click to expand...
.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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