Comment Fun Friday File Function

[Cecil]

Hi,
Today I need needed a function to return the a give file size into a human readable format. Now I've written a few variation of this code over many years, but this time I looked at some Python code and I converted it into the ABL. Because of it's simplicity I thought I would share it. It could be useful for anybody else who needed formatted value of a file size.

FUNCTION fileSizer RETURNS CHARACTER (INPUT pdeFileSize AS DECIMAL):

    DEFINE VARIABLE chUnitSize AS CHARACTER   NO-UNDO EXTENT 6 INITIAL ['bytes','KB','MB','GB','TB','PB'].

    DEFINE VARIABLE inLoop AS INTEGER     NO-UNDO.

    DO inLoop = 1 TO EXTENT(chUnitSize):

        IF pdeFileSize LT 1024 THEN
            RETURN SUBSTITUTE('&1 &2',
                              ROUND(pdeFileSize,2),
                              chUnitSize[inLoop]
                              ).

        pdeFileSize= (pdeFileSize / 1024).

    END.
END FUNCTION .

 

[Cringer]

You're missing a space between pinFileSize and LT Other than that it's a clever solution.

 

[Cecil]

You're missing a space between pinFileSize and LT Other than that it's a clever solution.

Fixed. Thanks for the mini code review.

 

[GregTomkins]

I would like to use this function, but it is clearly completely and hopelessly broken, as evident by its use of UPPER CASE keywords

 

[Cecil]

I would like to use this function, but it is clearly completely and hopelessly broken, as evident by its use of UPPER CASE keywords

About 12 years ago I was working alongside with Progress Professional Services UK. Any programs I wrote had to conform to their Programming Standards which included using UPPERCASE keywords and Hungarian notation and it has stuck with me ever since.

 

[TomBascom]

I would like to use this function, but it is clearly completely and hopelessly broken, as evident by its use of UPPER CASE keywords

Good point. They are also in color

 

[Cecil]

Good point. They are also in color

"I feel so ashamed.... I'll revert back to using a Commodore PET with only a single colour."

 

[TomBascom]

Well, you can keep the colors but please get rid of the vile hungarian notation. That has no place in modern programming. Actually it has no place in programming at all. Except as a misbegotten misunderstanding briefly promoted in Microsoft's echo chamber and then spread like a common cold far and wide.

 

[Cecil]

Well, you can keep the colors but please get rid of the vile hungarian notation. That has no place in modern programming. Actually it has no place in programming at all. Except as a misbegotten misunderstanding briefly promoted in Microsoft's echo chamber and then spread like a common cold far and wide.

Maybe somebody should update the OE documentation regarding the 'Variable naming conventions' and a quash this "vile Hungarian notation". Dam you Bedford for dragging your heals. I suppose it does help when we get Noobs coming to ProgressTalk asking for help and we steer them to the documentation for the answers.

http://documentation.progress.com/o...ex.html#page/gsabl/OpenEdge_3.5.html#ww625585
http://documentation.progress.com/o...ex.html#page/gsabl/OpenEdge_3.5.html#ww625585
I guess it time for me to break a habit of a lifetime. On a side note, in my very first Progress Job all variables, temp-tables and even buffers were prefixed with "wk" regardless of there datatype.

 

[Stefan]

One advantage of 'vile Hungarian notation' is that you generally never have to give your variables 'silly names' to prevent them colliding with keywords.

def var time as integer no-undo /* time cannot be undone ;-) */.

results in:

** The keyword time may not be used as a name. (329)
**  Could not understand line 1. (196)

 

[TomBascom]

That's pretty weak. A good variable name tells you it's purpose. StartTime, endTime or jobTime for instance.

 

[Stefan]

It's just the quickest I could come up with, I have run into others.

I find that the data type helps in preventing you from typing nonsense (which the compiler will tell you later on).

Even more interesting, IMO, is prepending the mode (global, input, output).

Moving on to the next interesting discussion CamelCase versus others. Some things are case sensitive (*nix filesystem, classes) , others are case insensitive (everything else) and others yet shout their case insensitivity at you (oracle tables / files are all uppercase). Using different casing depending on what you are doing gets tedious - so it would always be start_time, end_time, job_time for instance.

 

[tamhas]

http://www.oehive.org/Hungarian

 

[TomBascom]

I wouldn't use the documentation or Progress provided sample code as a defense. That's like using a gang member as a character witness or using a bank robber as a job reference

 

[TomBascom]

"System Hungarian" is exactly the perversion that should be eliminated. Prepending gibberish to variable names is just ridiculous. Something which even Microsoft, the originator of the travesty, has realized and moved away from.

 

[Cecil]

I feel we have gone a bit off-topic. May be I should open up new thread regarding "What's the pros & cons of using innocent prefix character(s) for variables?".

 

[Stefan]

I feel we have gone a bit off-topic. May be I should open up new thread regarding "What's the pros & cons of using innocent prefix character(s) for variables?".

How can a discussion about great hungarian notation and other code styles be off-topic for a thread starting with 'fun friday' ?!?? ;-)

Now let's move on to how many spaces a tab should be. I call 3.

 

[TomBascom]

2

 

[tamhas]

2 for a block, 4 for a line continuation.

 

[TheMadDBA]

So much heresy in this thread