PL file size increase

[taqvia]

Hi,

I am bit confused why the size of .pl increases when deleting a entry from pl. I had removed certain entries from pl and expected a decrease in size of pl but on the other hand it increases any idea why?

#!/bin/ksh
#read entry from txt file which needs to be removed from pl
cat differ1.txt |
while read line
do
/usr/dlcdev/bin/prolib vcsc.pl -delete $line >> outputpro
done

the files which i want to delete are no more in the PL which suggests entry was removed but the size of pl increased.

Regards,

Arshad

 

[TomBascom]

What version of Progress?

Personally, I never do it this way. I always build the PL from scratch.

 

[taqvia]

Version progress 9.1e04(outdated version )

yeah i do understand that we should build it from scratch but there are some issues in that and so thought of deleting the entries not required but to my surprise deleting entries has increased the size of pl even though entries were successfully removed.

Arshad

 

[TomBascom]

I don't know why it is doing that but I am not surprised. There are reasons why I always build them from scratch

 

[StuartT]

Procedure libraries have always behaved in this way, as Tom said the only way to get things nice and neat is to start from scratch.
The reason they grow when you delete entries is that when performing this action information is written at the end of the file to say that the file is being deleted.

In the dim and distant depths of my memory (It has been a while since I was in the position of having to maintain procedure libraries) I think there is an option to "compress" the library freeing up space, although as its been over 10 years this may just be my mind playing tricks on me.

You could maybe try /usr/dlcdev/bin/prolib vcsc.pl -compress to see if it works
(remember to take a copy of the library before doing this)

 

[taqvia]

It worked and brought the file size what was expected.

Thanks
Arshad

 

[PDECODE]

If you are working in win32 environment you can try use WinPL to see how "dirty" is PL file (not used space inside file)

WinPL is free PROGRESS replacement for Windows with some basic and additional features. There are some limitations so read more in Readme.txt!

Features:
- Open and test library
- Extract files
- Create library
- Delete files inside library
- Library information
- Defragment library
- Search files inside library
- Save report about library content
- Associate libraries with WinPL

http://progress-tools.x10.mx/winpl.html
http://progress-tools.110mb.com/winpl.html